Aimless
by syaffolee
Closing in on 60k, I am still not feeling the story. Sure, I know where I want the characters to go, but the hows and the whys? Forget it. At the moment, all I’m typing are words and most of the time, most of them don’t register with me. Instead, it’s become a matter of endurance. I have the strong urge to get to the end of this month and this story and then wash my hands of it.
Many people say that when you’re writing a story, you’re too close to it to really view it with any objectivity. To help with editing, it’s a good idea to put the story away for a while and then look at it later with a fresh pair of eyes. The problem is, I don’t feel close to the story at all. It’s as if I’m writing this by remote control and all I’m doing is putting down the words dispassionately, as if I’m just a factory worker doing my job. I don’t feel as if I’m injecting any of my own style or enthusiasm into it.
If it were any other time of the year, I might have scrapped the story many chapters ago and have moved on to something else. But this is Nanowrimo. And I’ve already committed to the idea in October. (Of course, back then, I thought the idea was going to be awesome, but things have a way of turning around once you actually do it.) And even though I’m not particularly happy with the story, I sort of want to use this as a lesson and an example. Things can get less than ideal. But that is no reason, no excuse, to quit.
To me, Nanowrimo is a lot about perseverance and seeing things through. So this experiment in trying different timelines didn’t work so well this year. So what? Maybe I don’t have the literary savvy to turn this around. Most of this will probably end up as first draft dreck that I don’t really want to look at again. But at least I’m giving it a go and pushing my own boundaries.
Hi! I stopped by because I saw on the NaNo blogger forum that you were at 86,000 words. I am truly amazed, b/c I just can’t fathom how that is physically possible! I squeaked the last several thousand to get up over 50,000.
I think even though you say you don’t feel close to your story, you never know what you have until you do look at it with fresh eyes. I’ve felt like I was on auto-pilot before and have come back to look at something and go “oh, this doesn’t suck after all!”
Then, as I work on my edits, I grow closer to it over time.
anyway – congrats! I’m having a little NaNo blog party over at http://theaccidentalnovelist.wordpress.com/ if you want to stop by and share some of your experience.
Thanks for stopping by! And congrats on getting that 50k. It’s no small feat no matter how you look at it.
I usually have a love/hate relationship with my writing, especially while I’m writing. But for some reason, this year, I’m feeling particularly disengaged. Anyways, I have to credit my word count to practice. I’ve been attempting to do 50k stories all year round for the past two years in order to get myself comfortable with the amount of work professional writers would do. Most of those 86,000 words were written during write-ins. And I don’t even type that fast. I just don’t get distracted. :)
Staying focused is half the battle! My brain can only do so much writing each day before it fries. But I do write every day, not just in November, so I’m used to working steadily, if not quickly.
And lucky for me I write MG/YA so 50,000 words is actually a good length.