That's a big no no

So, I finally reached a point where my story irritated me so much, and another one tantalised me so much that I just couldn't ignore it anymore. Well, I gave up on my original story... I know, I know, it's the complete wrong thing to be doing, but I just couldn't motivated myself to write anything more on the original story. I imagine I will eventually go back to it, and give it a decent attempt at completion, but right now, my mind is passionate about the second story I had lined up for NaNoWriMo.

So where does that leave me? Well, a long way behind. I've managed to scrape out just shy of 6000 words in the last two days, and if I can maintain this pace, I will be heading for success, but I'm going back to work tonight, and that means that I won't be able to write much for the next six days. So yeah, I think I'm in trouble. I'm in especially deep trouble if I still think I can write 100000 words this november, like to say, finish this story and actually get back to my original one and finish that one too.

I could be underestimating myself here, or I could be overestimating the time sucking effects of the other things in my life. But ultimately, I'm actually starting to get very nervous about finishing NaNo this year. I know that I want to, and I know that I should, but that little part of me that is filled with self doubt has recently gone from a quiet little whisper to shouting at the top of its lungs. Yeah, I think it's going to be a rough month.

Editors

So, one of my muses read what I have written so far, and was impressed. Now, she hasn't read anything I've written before, so it did give me sort of a boost. But, ultimately, this post isn't about how various people in my life enable my ego. This is about Editors.

She gave me a few hints as to what I should add, or change, and it got me thinking about the nature of editors. Every time I hear people talk about editors, they don't really have a whole lot of nice things to say. Admittedly I don't have a real editor, but I actually look forward to getting any sort of criticism, it lets me know if I'm on the right track. She only made a few suggestions, and came up with a few tweaks to the styling, but it still makes me wonder how people can get so frazzled at being told the ways in which their novel doesn't make the grade.

The only possible thing that I can think of is maybe the idea that being told that maybe they aren't quite good enough just yet damages their precious ego. But to people who can't take being told that they need to fix something, need to work on their novel some more before it's finished, I have only one thing to say: Get over yourself!

Seriously, every author gets revisions back from their Editors. Every author has to revise, and rewrite. Every author doesn't get it right the first time. I read, a lot, and when I read advice from published author's on how to get published, they all say the same thing. Every piece of work needs revision, and getting help from someone who reviews work for a living is the best way to ensure you aren't wasting your time.

Well, I've had my rant, so, I'm signing off now. Enjoy.

AHHH, Sombody stole my day!

Okay, so, no one's actually stolen a day off of me, but it certainly feels that way. I had well founded intentions of writing many thousands of words today, and of getting imense amounts of work done, and of writing this post at a reasonable hour so that I could still call it today, and not, at the last minute. But, somewhere along the line, the day disappeared into a sleep deprived haze of work, and volunteer commitments. Now it's late, and I'm without time, and without a word count, and without any evidence of having put effort into my writing today...


In a perfect world, all I would have to do would be maintain some semblence of a social life, and write. But, unfortunately, I have bills to pay, and commitments to keep, etc. etc. etc. Maybe if I could actually manage to get more than four hours sleep a night, or if I had an extra six or so hours in the day to get everything done.

Well, that officially makes it two days in a row without having done much work, leaving me, as I said yesterday, 6668 words behind my two novel target, or in the best case scenario, 3334 words behind a single novel target...

I promise that tomorrow I won't write about how hard I am having it, I even have a topic I find interesting, or at very least, amusing to talk about...

Why did I even bother

Have you ever been writing along, and realised that your work is absolute crap? I don’t just mean bad, I mean quite possibly the most self indulged, grammatically poor, worst laid out, boring, dull, dreary, characterless story that has every existed? Truly, and utterly crap? Well, I have, several times now.

In my first nano, this wasn’t really that much of a problem. I decided to write a mainstream fiction story, and whenever I would get bogged down in something not so interesting, something that just slowed down the pace of the story, I would cut to the chase, literally. Whatever my next action sequence was, that is what I would cut too. And it was good, or at least so I’m told. I’m told that it was engaging, and exciting, and gripping, and interesting, and most of all, fun. It was everything a good mainstream fiction should be. I even managed to make my wife cry when I killed off a main character, and again in the final scene held in a cemetery. I’m actually quite proud of those two.

My second attempt, wasn’t so successful, and to be honest, I can’t even remember what I was trying to write. I actually didn’t even manage to make my 50,000 words. I suspect that I changed stories multiple times during the month and therefore couldn’t make the word count, despite having on regular occasions pulled out well over 10-15 thousand words in a single day. 

My third attempt was a poor, poor, really really poor, science fiction attempt. It made 50,000 words, but I’ve since dumped it into the bottom of a drawer (metaphorically, its actually in a  zip file hidden somewhere obscure on my hard drive), and haven’t touched it since. I mean, really really bad. But, I had to try it, I loved the idea of writing a science fiction, even if I couldn’t pull it off, or even come up with a decent concept to base my story on.

My fourth attempt was good, or at least, once again, that’s what I’m told, but I never actually finished the story. I was writing a murder mystery, and I had an interesting killer, with an interesting technique, and an interesting plot development that was going to eventually finish with the hero finding out who the killer was, and have one final plot twist at the end, just for good measure. Because I never finished the book, there is no way for me to say whether or not it was worthy of the praise my wife gave me in writing it.

Now I’m on my fifth attempt and I’m going back to science fiction. It’s a good concept, in a good world, with an actual story to tell. The only problem, it’s still horrible. I’m four and a half thousand words into the story, and I’m hating every word I’m putting onto paper. My first fifteen hundred words were excellent, and my wife thoroughly enjoyed the way the scene played out. But ever since then, I’ve not been able to write anything worth reading. 

I know nano is all about turning off your inner editor, and just letting the story you have inside of you out, putting it onto paper, good or bad, and enjoying the challenge. But there is still this part of me that says: “No Ian, this is terrible work, you must give it up and try something better!”

It’s only my second day of NaNo 2010, and already I want to scrap what I’ve got and start again. I’ve even been tempted to become a NaNo Rebel and try rewriting my original story again, but only this time, with more actual story to tell. I don’t think I will do that, but it doesn’t change my extreme desire to scrap everything past my first fifteen hundred words  and try again... I suppose even then, if I did that, what would I put in its place? pudding? I should think not. I’ve got no other idea to put in place of the terrible work I’m putting into the story now. 

Every year I think this is a good idea, and then, as with this year, a day or so in I begin to wonder why I put myself through it. And I want to become a published author? Ha! I clearly don’t have the backbone. Now I just have to figure out what the rest of my story is going to be filled with if it isn’t going to be the tripe that’s coming out of me at the moment... I hope you are all having better luck than I. 

Days Remaining: 28

Words Remaining: 44670