Not Where I Wanted To Be At The End Of Day Nine
I have to apologize to NANOWRIMO this year because I'm really not that into it. I think the only reason that I keep going is that I don't want to let the rest of Team Chicago 2006 down and I hope to mine something out of the current novel for use in future years when I have more energy to put in the effort that a good NANOWRIMO experience deserves.
I don't know what exactly I'll mine out of this current novel since there isn't much of a plot to take out. There's a bit of characterization and maybe a few lines but there is nothing happening. There isn't even any interpersonal conflict to make the thing interesting yet. And I guess that was fine in the first couple of thousand words but now almost 12,000 words in and at the one-third point in the month, I should at least have some idea how to make the book exciting.
I've never had this problem before. Even with "Why Sleep When I'll Only Dream?" which consisted of two people traveling around Europe, I knew exactly how the characters were going to get from Point A to Point B and what needed to happen to them to come to the realizations they needed to come to. Here, the best I can think of is having the homophobic character come in contact with the homosexual character and have the two need to depend on each other in some way.
Sure it's not a bad plot but I've always prided myself in being in no way that derivirtive.
I came to the realization that I hate my novel when I was writing the meeting between Anthony and Beth and Allison and the best conversation I could come up with is Anthony and Allison singing Cub's "New York City" (made popular by They Might Be Giants) and having Beth get jealous.
Yeah, that's interpersonal drama and people overcoming the odds like I had planned at the start of the month.
I think it's time to give the novel the jolt it needs and have the building catch fire already. It feels as though I should have gotten to this point in the rising action a long time ago so I wouldn't be this bored with my novel.
Oh how I long for the days when I had likeable (or more to the point interesting) characters, funny scenes, and ideas on how to make the plot twist and turn. This year I planned none of this and now with only 20 days left, this lack of forethought is really coming home to roost on my psyche.
It's really no plot, big problem this year.
I'm not the kind of person who can just keep writing about random misadventures until I reach 50,000. Something's going to have to happen soon or I'm going to get so bored I'm going to stop writing.
Or maybe I just need a good night's sleep to think about it. The problem is the last two years my dreams helped me out because I knew the characters and my subconscious did what my conscious mind couldn't. This year's there's nothing.
And nothing when you're trying to write 50,000 words about it actually turns out to be less than nothing - it's a discouragement.
---
CURRENT WORD COUNT: 11,967 words
I don't know what exactly I'll mine out of this current novel since there isn't much of a plot to take out. There's a bit of characterization and maybe a few lines but there is nothing happening. There isn't even any interpersonal conflict to make the thing interesting yet. And I guess that was fine in the first couple of thousand words but now almost 12,000 words in and at the one-third point in the month, I should at least have some idea how to make the book exciting.
I've never had this problem before. Even with "Why Sleep When I'll Only Dream?" which consisted of two people traveling around Europe, I knew exactly how the characters were going to get from Point A to Point B and what needed to happen to them to come to the realizations they needed to come to. Here, the best I can think of is having the homophobic character come in contact with the homosexual character and have the two need to depend on each other in some way.
Sure it's not a bad plot but I've always prided myself in being in no way that derivirtive.
I came to the realization that I hate my novel when I was writing the meeting between Anthony and Beth and Allison and the best conversation I could come up with is Anthony and Allison singing Cub's "New York City" (made popular by They Might Be Giants) and having Beth get jealous.
Yeah, that's interpersonal drama and people overcoming the odds like I had planned at the start of the month.
I think it's time to give the novel the jolt it needs and have the building catch fire already. It feels as though I should have gotten to this point in the rising action a long time ago so I wouldn't be this bored with my novel.
Oh how I long for the days when I had likeable (or more to the point interesting) characters, funny scenes, and ideas on how to make the plot twist and turn. This year I planned none of this and now with only 20 days left, this lack of forethought is really coming home to roost on my psyche.
It's really no plot, big problem this year.
I'm not the kind of person who can just keep writing about random misadventures until I reach 50,000. Something's going to have to happen soon or I'm going to get so bored I'm going to stop writing.
Or maybe I just need a good night's sleep to think about it. The problem is the last two years my dreams helped me out because I knew the characters and my subconscious did what my conscious mind couldn't. This year's there's nothing.
And nothing when you're trying to write 50,000 words about it actually turns out to be less than nothing - it's a discouragement.
---
CURRENT WORD COUNT: 11,967 words
posted by incendiarymind at 9:48 PM
1 Comments:
If things are getting boring, definitely try to do something unexpected. It doesn't have to be as drastic as having a UFO land on your main character's back yard, but you can have your characters be forced to confront something that they would normally avoid. Have characters who would normally stay out of each others way be forced to work with each other.
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