Wednesday, November 15, 2006

Failing at not sucking

I stand by my previous posts about NaNoWriMo - sit down and write your story. It's not too late, but you'll have to work extra overtime to ever get finished.

But, as I say that, I have to admit that I am sucking big time. I should be at around 20,000 words in my NaNo Novel. I'm about a quarter of that. And you'll even just have to take my word on it because I haven't bothered to update the word counter thing.

It's not a matter of drive or lack of ideas - I actually had less tangible story when I got to this point last year. All I knew when I started that one was where it was going to end up and that it needed to take the most ridiculous route possible to get there. I had no idea what that route would involve, but I slogged through it and I was pretty happy with what I got out of it.

This year, I started a new one on an old theme -- one of my seminal ideas going back to a WordStar document on my old XT Compaq Luggable. I got about 1500 words into it, thinking to myself that I really might have it this time -- I might be able to take this one all the way to the bank, er, word counter. Whatever.

The second day of working on it, I was blindsided by a whole new idea - one that came fully formed with opening paragraphs and a pretty good idea of where it was going and how it would get there.

So -- I scrapped the first one. Again. I started up the new one about a guy who wakes up with a lump on his forehead. I started writing about how he doesn't understand why his house isn't what he remembers his house to be. And I've got more. It's waiting to come out. But holy shit is it ever hard to write on my current schedule. I've been tapping away on breaks at work (and I should be tapping away here - how many words are in this post which could have been put to better use?) which is why my word count isn't updated... I've got little text files scattered here and there (which my fancy new USB flash drive thing should remedy) and I haven't yet combinated the whole thing back into one document.

I feel compelled to write this novel for many reasons, and most of them selfish, but thanks to Kingo I may have found a bit more inspiration. I'm not sure if it's enough to push me over the top, but it's certainly enough to kick it up a notch and try a little harder.

Kingo sent me a link to Sarahdigm Shift. Now I'm linking right back so you can see what he said she said.

I don't even know what to say here. What I want to do is go find her house and knock on the door and say, "Thank you," in person. I'm sure after reading any part of that book she'd never even unlock the screen door, but I would still offer my thanks for her comments. I also owe her a corrected copy of the book when I get around to it -- that one's got quite a few typos in it.

I'm going to stop blabbering here and go back to the guy with the bump on his forehead. He's about to meet Ted S. Edwards, in the flesh.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Funny how people run around in circles and you think they'd be the same people every time they pass by again but they aren't, and it's hard to quite put your finger on it.

Look at me!

I hope you can keep working on your shit there, though I'm a little jealous that you're doing it at all. I really, really want to be doing it; I knew that I COULD'VE done it again this time, but it felt horribly selfish of me to do that while my wife was ready to pop. But mostly what I mean is that it rocked last year, having both of us doing it and encouraging each other either by straight-up encouragement or trying to out-do each others' word count. I think somehow I gotta make myself do it again next year, and you should too also.

Where's that circle? What's that line?

Anonymous said...

Amazon still asks me if I want to send things as a gift to Ted S. Edwards.

Sarah said...

Thank you. Hope you finish this one too. I've got another $7.98 here with your name on it. ;)