Today I'm discussing what happens when I write my characters and realize that they want different things than I do.
So you've created some characters and set them loose in a fun, vibrant environment (erm, the environment will be another post, I'm sure) and now you want to get to the Big Plot Points you had envisioned. If you're better than me, you might have even written down these points in some form or another of an outline.
My problem is that sometimes, my characters don't want to do that. As I write scene after scene, trying to push them into a specific corner, they squirm and wiggle their way into different rooms, sometimes sprinting down hallways of ideas I can't see. (And then I have to be cautious, because I'm afraid of the unknown.)
Does that make me a bad writer if I can't control my characters?
I don't think it does. (Of course I don't think it does!) I just happen to prefer to write character-driven plot more than action-driven plot. There's nothing wrong with either form. But to me, it feels much more organic to step back and observe what my characters do in a situation rather than force them to do what I want them to.
I don't think it makes me a bad writer, but I think it means I have to be aware of pacing and making sure that I cut out superfluous scenes. I think it means I have to make sure my environments have interesting elements to interact with and I have to occasionally nudge my characters to explore their own personalities.
I think this all goes back to what I said a little bit ago about how I need to allow more time to pass in my writing. Although I am perfectly content to read about the ins and outs of my characters day after day, not everyone will feel the same way. By forcing myself to use time leaps (sorry, maybe they have a fancy name that I don't know the phrase for), I've been forcing myself to imagine what has happened in the interim time instead of writing down every time the main character has trouble falling asleep.
I'm pretty sure that's helping me balance my characters with a little bit of action. We'll find out.
Showing posts with label nanowrimo. Show all posts
Showing posts with label nanowrimo. Show all posts
Monday, November 11, 2013
Sunday, November 3, 2013
Totally Giddy - Will it Last?
Like a teenager in a first relationship, I am over the moon with my NaNo Novel so far. We've only really known each other for three days, but I feel like it's been forever. I mean, we just get each other. When I want to write a scene, my NaNo Novel is ready for me. It's encouraging me to keep writing. It's letting me know that, sure, yeah, I'm a little cheesy, but I'm having fun.
I want to stay up late writing. (Yeah, ok, "late" means ten pm.)
This is so completely different from last year.
Last year, I literally could not write. I distinctly remember trying to think of a plot for a story, and failing so hard that I thought for sure I was never going to be creative again. This year, it's like all of that potential creativity waited for me all along!
For the first time, I tried doing "word sprints" tonight. That's where you set a timer and then write as many words as possible during that time (no, you can't just write the same sentence over and over again. I'm looking at you, Jack Torrence!).
I set a timer for ten minutes. The first time, I wrote 584 words. The next time I wrote 632 words in ten minutes. I was happy about at least 80% of those words. You guys, I need to take a moment, because I'm pretty sure I'm just gushing about myself. It's embarrassing, really.
It's just nice to create things. And though what I'm creating is far from perfect, for once it feels like the story in my head is actually materializing on the screen in front of me. That's a new experience for me with my own characters. (I consider fanfiction to be a perfectly fine way to write, but it is a different animal to work with other people's creative property.)
So far, I have gotten off to a good start. I have 8423 words written, which will hopefully tide me over as I tackle my next round of schoolwork tomorrow. In the meantime, I'll try to keep my ridiculous moods to myself.
Probably.
I want to stay up late writing. (Yeah, ok, "late" means ten pm.)
This is so completely different from last year.
Last year, I literally could not write. I distinctly remember trying to think of a plot for a story, and failing so hard that I thought for sure I was never going to be creative again. This year, it's like all of that potential creativity waited for me all along!
For the first time, I tried doing "word sprints" tonight. That's where you set a timer and then write as many words as possible during that time (no, you can't just write the same sentence over and over again. I'm looking at you, Jack Torrence!).
I set a timer for ten minutes. The first time, I wrote 584 words. The next time I wrote 632 words in ten minutes. I was happy about at least 80% of those words. You guys, I need to take a moment, because I'm pretty sure I'm just gushing about myself. It's embarrassing, really.
It's just nice to create things. And though what I'm creating is far from perfect, for once it feels like the story in my head is actually materializing on the screen in front of me. That's a new experience for me with my own characters. (I consider fanfiction to be a perfectly fine way to write, but it is a different animal to work with other people's creative property.)
So far, I have gotten off to a good start. I have 8423 words written, which will hopefully tide me over as I tackle my next round of schoolwork tomorrow. In the meantime, I'll try to keep my ridiculous moods to myself.
Probably.
Entrenched in Writing
Since November started, I have gotten off to a good start on my NaNo Novel. I'm currently ahead on schoolwork, so I'm able to write during Silas's naps. However, this coming week, I am back to studying new topics, so I don't know how I will continue. We'll see.
I have another area of my writing that I know I need to work on, and I've decided to work on that in this novel as well. And that issue is the flow of time. I really, really like to show EVERYTHING. I don't know how to step back and leave part of a day unwritten. This is somewhat related to my annoyance with books that skip large periods of time; I'm pretty sure it's a personal problem and not due to bad writing. But, I just can't stand it. I hate that books and movies can just show a climatic scene and then cut to something else. I hate it because in real life, when something happens, people have to deal with it and then continue dealing with it.
Maybe this just means I have a problem with letting go of things. But here's an example. A character will make a BIG REVEAL about something, and then we cut to three days later. I can't stand it. What happened directly after the BIG REVEAL might not be as dramatically exciting, but it really kills my suspension of disbelief to think that no one else would have a problem with waiting three days to actually discuss what happened.
Again, I dunno. I will look for some more concrete examples later, but I have to go back to noveling now. And despite my rant above, I will be working hard to pick and choose the moments of time that I show, rather than just describe every minute of the day. (For example, in my first NaNo Novel, the 50,000+ words I wrote describe what happens in the course of one and a half days. Oh boy.)
I have another area of my writing that I know I need to work on, and I've decided to work on that in this novel as well. And that issue is the flow of time. I really, really like to show EVERYTHING. I don't know how to step back and leave part of a day unwritten. This is somewhat related to my annoyance with books that skip large periods of time; I'm pretty sure it's a personal problem and not due to bad writing. But, I just can't stand it. I hate that books and movies can just show a climatic scene and then cut to something else. I hate it because in real life, when something happens, people have to deal with it and then continue dealing with it.
Maybe this just means I have a problem with letting go of things. But here's an example. A character will make a BIG REVEAL about something, and then we cut to three days later. I can't stand it. What happened directly after the BIG REVEAL might not be as dramatically exciting, but it really kills my suspension of disbelief to think that no one else would have a problem with waiting three days to actually discuss what happened.
Again, I dunno. I will look for some more concrete examples later, but I have to go back to noveling now. And despite my rant above, I will be working hard to pick and choose the moments of time that I show, rather than just describe every minute of the day. (For example, in my first NaNo Novel, the 50,000+ words I wrote describe what happens in the course of one and a half days. Oh boy.)
Tuesday, October 29, 2013
It's the time of year guys!
That's right. NaNoWriMo starts on Friday, and this year I am ready to get back into writing down the worst 50,000 words that pop into my head. Last year, I tried and got about a thousand words, but the truth is that I didn't really have any ideas - or any free time.
I'm ok with this. I understand that a newborn is going to require all of my free time, and I don't mind at all that for one year, the world was spared of my subpar prose because I was taking care of a teeny-tiny newborn Silas. (And boy, was he making the cutest faces to make up for it!) And considering I'm still hoping to have some more kids, it's safe to say there are other awful novels that I won't be writing in some of these coming years.
Why do I do NaNo?
Well, for one thing, the friend that introduced it to me is pretty awesome, and she had done it and won for several years. With my competitive spirit, there was no way I could not do it. And it was fun writing down all of my thoughts. Writing grounds me and allows me to imagine other people and their lives.
I'm not good at it; far too many of my protagonists are white, female, heterosexual women who share most of my values. So my goal this year is to deal with diversity. Diversity comes in a lot of forms. For me, first off, I write mostly about women because there are scads of male protagonists. That was the closest to diversity I got. But within that, I rarely HAD strong male characters. That's stupid. I'm looking for balance, for realism.
That's why this year, I'm writing from three perspectives I don't have a lot of experience with. One of my two main characters is going to be a guy, a 14 year old high school freshman who is dealing with the fact that his dad has cancer and might not be there to see him graduate. I can't think of a single male main character I have dealt with, fanfiction not counting since those weren't my characters.
The other main character will be a girl, a 14 year old high school freshman who is dealing with her sexuality. She's pretty sure she's into girls, but doesn't quite know how to react to this. I've never written about this before. Oddly enough, my previous fanfiction writing has included gay men, but never a lesbian. That's silly; obviously both exist. Finally, I intend for this girl to be African American. I'm terrified to try. What right do I have, you know? For all of these perspectives, I'm afraid I will portray characters in a racist light, overly stereotypically, and worst of all, as defined only by what makes them unique compared to me.
So, chances are that in about a month, I will have written 50,000 words about subjects I know very little about. My hope is to use this experience to learn more. I don't think I'll ever write a novel that people will want to read. I'll never be an author. My writing might always be mainly for myself, but as long as I'm trying to be better at it, I'll be happy.
I'm ok with this. I understand that a newborn is going to require all of my free time, and I don't mind at all that for one year, the world was spared of my subpar prose because I was taking care of a teeny-tiny newborn Silas. (And boy, was he making the cutest faces to make up for it!) And considering I'm still hoping to have some more kids, it's safe to say there are other awful novels that I won't be writing in some of these coming years.
Why do I do NaNo?
Well, for one thing, the friend that introduced it to me is pretty awesome, and she had done it and won for several years. With my competitive spirit, there was no way I could not do it. And it was fun writing down all of my thoughts. Writing grounds me and allows me to imagine other people and their lives.
I'm not good at it; far too many of my protagonists are white, female, heterosexual women who share most of my values. So my goal this year is to deal with diversity. Diversity comes in a lot of forms. For me, first off, I write mostly about women because there are scads of male protagonists. That was the closest to diversity I got. But within that, I rarely HAD strong male characters. That's stupid. I'm looking for balance, for realism.
That's why this year, I'm writing from three perspectives I don't have a lot of experience with. One of my two main characters is going to be a guy, a 14 year old high school freshman who is dealing with the fact that his dad has cancer and might not be there to see him graduate. I can't think of a single male main character I have dealt with, fanfiction not counting since those weren't my characters.
The other main character will be a girl, a 14 year old high school freshman who is dealing with her sexuality. She's pretty sure she's into girls, but doesn't quite know how to react to this. I've never written about this before. Oddly enough, my previous fanfiction writing has included gay men, but never a lesbian. That's silly; obviously both exist. Finally, I intend for this girl to be African American. I'm terrified to try. What right do I have, you know? For all of these perspectives, I'm afraid I will portray characters in a racist light, overly stereotypically, and worst of all, as defined only by what makes them unique compared to me.
So, chances are that in about a month, I will have written 50,000 words about subjects I know very little about. My hope is to use this experience to learn more. I don't think I'll ever write a novel that people will want to read. I'll never be an author. My writing might always be mainly for myself, but as long as I'm trying to be better at it, I'll be happy.
Saturday, November 10, 2012
One week in
Worked for the week, contributed to society, left my baby with someone else five days this week and I'm still alive. It's going to take a while to get a morning routine that works, but once Silas starts sleeping through the nights better, I think we'll be ok.
I was driving to pick him up after work on Friday and Queen's "Another One Bites the Dust" came on the radio. Music is crazy. I completely relate songs to past memories, and that one is firmly positioned to playing the original Diablo with my dad and sister. Specifically, even, I can picture the dungeon levels and the way that the creatures you'd fight in there had a burning animation when they died.
I also remember that friendly fire was always on in that game. Not like some of the fancier, newfangled games where you could click a button in "options" and then shoot your companions with nary an ill effect. My dad played the sorcerer character and, I'm not going to lie, he was probably a lot better at the game than us. But his chain lightning spell - that could clear out a room. And me, if I wasn't watching where I was going.
You know how parents do that thing where they act like they're playing a game or sport normally but somehow are just about at your skill level? And then you grow up and realize that actually they were just pretending and could have beaten you in any game? Well, my dad was really great about finding a way to play video games with us that weren't overwhelmingly hard on us but (I'm assuming here) that were still entertaining to him.
Growing up we had between four and five computers in our basement, which I just thought was how things worked. It was a pretty foreign concept that a household might have only one computer for everyone, or maybe even no computers at all. My dad's job - a computer programmer - might have skewed things technologically for us. I must have talked about this before, but I really enjoyed LAN gaming with my family to the point that online gaming (save for WoW) is a bit too much of a culture shock for me.
Anyhow, I've been trying to write my NaNo novel but it's not coming along at all. I thought last year was tough with my grandfather's funeral at the beginning of the month but having a baby to care for sort of saps up those little moments I could be writing.
Well, actually, I am writing right this moment, technically. I guess I prefer to update my blog when I have writing time these days. I guess I feel like more people read it and that it means more to me. But there's still a competitive edge in me somewhere that feels like I'll totally get it together and write 50,000 words still.
I was driving to pick him up after work on Friday and Queen's "Another One Bites the Dust" came on the radio. Music is crazy. I completely relate songs to past memories, and that one is firmly positioned to playing the original Diablo with my dad and sister. Specifically, even, I can picture the dungeon levels and the way that the creatures you'd fight in there had a burning animation when they died.
I also remember that friendly fire was always on in that game. Not like some of the fancier, newfangled games where you could click a button in "options" and then shoot your companions with nary an ill effect. My dad played the sorcerer character and, I'm not going to lie, he was probably a lot better at the game than us. But his chain lightning spell - that could clear out a room. And me, if I wasn't watching where I was going.
You know how parents do that thing where they act like they're playing a game or sport normally but somehow are just about at your skill level? And then you grow up and realize that actually they were just pretending and could have beaten you in any game? Well, my dad was really great about finding a way to play video games with us that weren't overwhelmingly hard on us but (I'm assuming here) that were still entertaining to him.
Growing up we had between four and five computers in our basement, which I just thought was how things worked. It was a pretty foreign concept that a household might have only one computer for everyone, or maybe even no computers at all. My dad's job - a computer programmer - might have skewed things technologically for us. I must have talked about this before, but I really enjoyed LAN gaming with my family to the point that online gaming (save for WoW) is a bit too much of a culture shock for me.
Anyhow, I've been trying to write my NaNo novel but it's not coming along at all. I thought last year was tough with my grandfather's funeral at the beginning of the month but having a baby to care for sort of saps up those little moments I could be writing.
Well, actually, I am writing right this moment, technically. I guess I prefer to update my blog when I have writing time these days. I guess I feel like more people read it and that it means more to me. But there's still a competitive edge in me somewhere that feels like I'll totally get it together and write 50,000 words still.
Tuesday, October 23, 2012
Oh gosh, it's almost November
Two things happen in November - the first of which is that I go back to work and it's going to suck. The second is that it is once again NaNoWriMo time and that means writing a novel (50,000 words or more) during the month of November. A good friend encouraged me to try it two years ago and so I did. It was fun. Then I did it last year as well.
Now, I'm going to do it again, but I don't know how in the world I'm going to win it. All of the little times that I dedicated to writing are kind of being dedicated to taking care of a baby. And what makes matters worse is that I won't get to spend all day with Silas; I'll be at work, so I'll want the evenings to be with him more often than not. My lunch break will probably be spent visiting him and my regular breaks at work are likely to be my pumping times. Ugh.
Did I mention I don't know what I want to write about anyhow? Last year I made some stuff up about vampires and it was hilariously bad. I also made a prediction that mummies were on their way "in" but alas, vampires are still popular and mummies are still in the shadows. Darn. There goes my career as "popular monstrous creature predictor."
Now, I'm going to do it again, but I don't know how in the world I'm going to win it. All of the little times that I dedicated to writing are kind of being dedicated to taking care of a baby. And what makes matters worse is that I won't get to spend all day with Silas; I'll be at work, so I'll want the evenings to be with him more often than not. My lunch break will probably be spent visiting him and my regular breaks at work are likely to be my pumping times. Ugh.
Did I mention I don't know what I want to write about anyhow? Last year I made some stuff up about vampires and it was hilariously bad. I also made a prediction that mummies were on their way "in" but alas, vampires are still popular and mummies are still in the shadows. Darn. There goes my career as "popular monstrous creature predictor."
Saturday, November 26, 2011
Year Two of NaNoWriMo winning!
I wasn't expecting to finish today; in fact if you look down, you'll see me fretting about just being halfway done about ten days ago. I'll admit that a huge part of my motivation to finish came from trying to beat one of my friends over the finish line. This morning we wrote a total of 18,000 words. She won first.
So now what?
Well, the other day I was reading an article on Slate.com and came across the following NaNo-related story. Somewhere in the thread of comments, some people were complaining that there is no point to NaNo. The basic argument goes something along the lines of a) "What's the point of writing 50,000 words of probable crap?" and b) "There are enough bad novels in the world!"
Luckily for you, I have some answers to those questions.
The first is - what's the point? There are quite a few points, so I'm going to stick to what works for me:
1). I love being creative and writing, so doing NaNo is akin to any other sort of hobby or project that I could do instead.
2). It's inspiring to see the rudimentary full first draft of a novel with a start and finish, even if there is some murder in the middle. Even if my goal isn't to be published, I have accomplished something; this goes back to reason one.
3). To paraphrase the NaNo site: Sometimes it is just better to get down an idea, even if some of it sucks. Or maybe a lot of it.
The second one is a lot easier to answer. Just because someone writes crap during November doesn't mean it will be published. This month allows thousands of new and veteran writers to practice writing. Isn't there some sort of saying about monkeys, time and typewriters that ends with the full works of Shakespeare? What I'm getting at is, maybe a good novel or two will come out of this. (Not that I'm calling NaNo participants monkeys. Nor insinuating that they can only use typewriters).
So sure, like anything in life (I'll just throw out pictionary as an example here), NaNo is not for everyone.
Life After NaNo
Well, November isn't over yet, so if you're still writing, go write. Come back and read this when you're done!
Personally, the first thing I did after finishing writing was vacuum and then give the puppies their baths and half haircuts. (Sherlock will only sit down for one half of a haircut at a time). Then I did something scary and sent my mom a copy of my very, very rough draft of a vampire novel.
Even knowing that, as my mom, she's contractually obligated to say at least vaguely nice things about it, I'm still nervous. But I'm also excited, because she'll be the first person to really look it over with fresh eyes and confirm to me if the plot holes I noticed are the same ones she notices. Or if the boring character I created maybe has some redeeming qualities.
Or it will be so bad that she'll burn it secretly and tell me later that she's "so proud of me for doing what I love!"
Saturday, November 19, 2011
My vampire novel is currently at 26,000ish words
This means, ladies and gentlemen, that I am just over halfway done for the month. Which terrifies me, because that means that I have to do what I just did all over again to win. Still, it's not impossible, so I'll keep going. A few things are jumping up as roadblocks this year that I didn't have last year. One of the most significant, and surprising to me is that my plot won't sustain my novel. (Although I do feel a little bit now for authors who I suspect ran into the same problem and then just went ahead and added 20,000 words worth of sex scenes).
Last year, I did a fantasy based novel that, at 55,000 words, still hadn't gotten much past the second or third day of events that I had planned for it. It was like my characters were just doing their thing and I was doing my best to record the events as fast as I could. This year is very similar, except my characters are threatening to stop doing their thing a good 20,000 words sooner than I had hoped. I've heard advice that when you run out of things to write about, you should toss a sex scene into the story, but I don't think that will cover the gap I'm looking at here.
Part of this roadblock comes from the fact that the event I want to be the climax of the story is just coming up so much quicker than I thought it would. I have ideas for what happens after it, but honestly, I wanted to do those ideas in a second novel rather than tacked on to the first. So I either need to find the parts of my current story that are too short and expand or swallow my plans and write beyond the current climax I have planned. And that just doesn't sit well with me, because I feel that it will take away from the story.
So I think my current plan is to just keep writing until the novel literally ends (aka, I get to the final scene, which I'm currently working towards) at where I want it to and look through it and see if I can add anything.
To others working through the same problem, I do recommend a walk. Going outside with my puppies for a bit helped clear my mind from the worry of "oh no I'm going to finish what I want to write way too soon" and brought me back to "let's just get it on paper and see where it goes from there."
I also recommend changing the music up every now and again. That's why I love my current Pandora channel, which goes from Evanescence to Breaking Benjamin to random piano pieces and occasionally Michael Buble (or however you spell his name).
So, happy writing all and hopefully in a few days I'll have a better update regarding my NaNo Novel 2011.
Last year, I did a fantasy based novel that, at 55,000 words, still hadn't gotten much past the second or third day of events that I had planned for it. It was like my characters were just doing their thing and I was doing my best to record the events as fast as I could. This year is very similar, except my characters are threatening to stop doing their thing a good 20,000 words sooner than I had hoped. I've heard advice that when you run out of things to write about, you should toss a sex scene into the story, but I don't think that will cover the gap I'm looking at here.
Part of this roadblock comes from the fact that the event I want to be the climax of the story is just coming up so much quicker than I thought it would. I have ideas for what happens after it, but honestly, I wanted to do those ideas in a second novel rather than tacked on to the first. So I either need to find the parts of my current story that are too short and expand or swallow my plans and write beyond the current climax I have planned. And that just doesn't sit well with me, because I feel that it will take away from the story.
So I think my current plan is to just keep writing until the novel literally ends (aka, I get to the final scene, which I'm currently working towards) at where I want it to and look through it and see if I can add anything.
To others working through the same problem, I do recommend a walk. Going outside with my puppies for a bit helped clear my mind from the worry of "oh no I'm going to finish what I want to write way too soon" and brought me back to "let's just get it on paper and see where it goes from there."
I also recommend changing the music up every now and again. That's why I love my current Pandora channel, which goes from Evanescence to Breaking Benjamin to random piano pieces and occasionally Michael Buble (or however you spell his name).
So, happy writing all and hopefully in a few days I'll have a better update regarding my NaNo Novel 2011.
Tuesday, November 15, 2011
Ack! November 15th!
We're halfway through November and that means I should be halfway through my novel. Sadly, I have only written about ~20,000 words which is a full 5k less than I should be at today. It's totally cool though because I'll just write like a crazy person on Saturday. Or maybe Sunday. Ooo and of course there is the extended weekend next week for Thanksgiving. So I'm not worried yet. But if you're writing and need more time to write, let me offer some suggestions:
Write during your lunch break! I often forget to eat lunch when I do this so it's a bit of a toss up because then when I get home I have to make toast right away or I'd starve and then I'm not writing after work. But who's to say I would have written then anyway?
Write down one sentence an hour. Later, string them together and add more sentences to make it somewhat coherent. I can't promise results but I can promise word count from that!
Later I plan on writing totally helpful editing tips for when the month is over and your word-spew is over. I can do that because I studied English in college. At least I think that is how it works.
Write during your lunch break! I often forget to eat lunch when I do this so it's a bit of a toss up because then when I get home I have to make toast right away or I'd starve and then I'm not writing after work. But who's to say I would have written then anyway?
Write down one sentence an hour. Later, string them together and add more sentences to make it somewhat coherent. I can't promise results but I can promise word count from that!
Later I plan on writing totally helpful editing tips for when the month is over and your word-spew is over. I can do that because I studied English in college. At least I think that is how it works.
Monday, October 3, 2011
Blogging Through October
Well, the countdown to NaNoWriMo is officially out of the "month" category and into the "day" category, with a little over 28 days until I will be attempting to write a 50k word story about, well, I think vampires. So in order to get used to hitting the keyboard until words come out, I have promised myself that I will post every day this month.
I can't promise it will be pretty. Or coherent. And it might even be somewhat unrelevant. I might just write down words that have similar sounds like belligerent or intelligent or possibly malevolent and then try to figure out what connects those words. I feel like somehow, it will make me a better person.
Now I can't give away too much about my soon to be awesome novel that I will work on in November, except to say that it won't be a vampire romance - probably. My main character is going to be a biochemist though, I think, so I can almost guarantee the novel will be factually inaccurate. There will be time for fact checking later!
Also, I'm trying to think about the setting. I want it to be modern day so that biochemistry is a thing, but I feel like it might be cheating. So then I want to set it in a modern day style fantasy world but then I think that people would think that's cheating too. So it's a good thing I have at least 28 days to think about this, because I'm going to need them.
I can't promise it will be pretty. Or coherent. And it might even be somewhat unrelevant. I might just write down words that have similar sounds like belligerent or intelligent or possibly malevolent and then try to figure out what connects those words. I feel like somehow, it will make me a better person.
Now I can't give away too much about my soon to be awesome novel that I will work on in November, except to say that it won't be a vampire romance - probably. My main character is going to be a biochemist though, I think, so I can almost guarantee the novel will be factually inaccurate. There will be time for fact checking later!
Also, I'm trying to think about the setting. I want it to be modern day so that biochemistry is a thing, but I feel like it might be cheating. So then I want to set it in a modern day style fantasy world but then I think that people would think that's cheating too. So it's a good thing I have at least 28 days to think about this, because I'm going to need them.
Saturday, September 10, 2011
Motivation
Somewhere around this time last year, one of my friends suggested I do NaNoWriMo with her in November. After she explained the basics (write a 50k word novel during the month of November), she mentioned she had been trying to get people to do it with her for years. I said it sounded like fun and set my fingers to my keyboard.
50,000 words and a month later, I was shocked to see the number of people who "won" compared to the those who signed up and tried. Out of 200,000 sign ups, around 30,000 got to the word limit. I had never thought that I would do anything less than what I needed to do to win and had therefore assumed everyone else thought the same way I did. Plus my friend had won it every year she did it, so I just thought that was how it worked.
Now, please don't think I'm bragging. I was excited to write, but the novel I wrote was so awful that I haven't even let my mom read it. The plot never came together how I had wanted and my characters felt static, boring and flat.
No, this definitely isn't bragging. This is just a way to highlight one of my greatest flaws - the crippling single mindedness with which I will pursue a task provided there is some sort of arbitrary yet widely recognized reward to doing such task.
So when I was writing to win NaNo, it was easy. The story unfolded before my eyes and I did my best to quickly write down everything that I saw happening. I eagerly sat down each day and wrote. I even did some minor revisions as I reread what I had gotten done.
Then I hit that 50k word mark and that was it. Even though my "novel" was far from done, even though I had made rudimentary plans to review and revise it into something more readable, there was just no more motivation. The story that had previously played in my mind like a movie hit a break in the reel and it was gone.
I need to find a way to harness this flaw of mine and use that sort of time and effort for good.
Also, I'll be doing NaNo again this year and would love to see others go for it as well!
50,000 words and a month later, I was shocked to see the number of people who "won" compared to the those who signed up and tried. Out of 200,000 sign ups, around 30,000 got to the word limit. I had never thought that I would do anything less than what I needed to do to win and had therefore assumed everyone else thought the same way I did. Plus my friend had won it every year she did it, so I just thought that was how it worked.
Now, please don't think I'm bragging. I was excited to write, but the novel I wrote was so awful that I haven't even let my mom read it. The plot never came together how I had wanted and my characters felt static, boring and flat.
No, this definitely isn't bragging. This is just a way to highlight one of my greatest flaws - the crippling single mindedness with which I will pursue a task provided there is some sort of arbitrary yet widely recognized reward to doing such task.
 |
| For example, WoW's achievement system has convinced me to fish up over 13,000 virtual "fish and other things." |
So when I was writing to win NaNo, it was easy. The story unfolded before my eyes and I did my best to quickly write down everything that I saw happening. I eagerly sat down each day and wrote. I even did some minor revisions as I reread what I had gotten done.
Then I hit that 50k word mark and that was it. Even though my "novel" was far from done, even though I had made rudimentary plans to review and revise it into something more readable, there was just no more motivation. The story that had previously played in my mind like a movie hit a break in the reel and it was gone.
I need to find a way to harness this flaw of mine and use that sort of time and effort for good.
Also, I'll be doing NaNo again this year and would love to see others go for it as well!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)