14,792…
Well, I’m actually happy. I cleared my own NaNo objective, which was to write every day. I could care less about the official goal.
I mean, damn, I wrote five short stories in a month. I’ve never done that before. Even if one of them was technically a fragment and not a finished piece.
This is progress.
It is now my intention to go into a ‘bonus round’ and see how long I can keep this daily writing thing going for. I would be very happy if I manage 50,000 words by next November.
Wriggle
It happens every so often that I just completely lose all control over a story. Sometimes this is a very good thing. I stop getting in my own way and the piece writes itself. Other times, a fairly well formed story goes rogue and I have to slap a slipshod ending on it to keep it from eating any more of my time.
“Winterbreak” was one such story. And it’s winterbreak in the sense of firebreak, not in the sense of school vacation. That keeps bugging me about it, but I haven’t been able to come up with a better title…
And I digress. What I’m trying to say here is that I’m not happy at all with the story. It doesn’t have a definite ending, and it’s a little bit deus ex-y to boot. I had a vision for what I wanted it to be about (childhood dreams aren’t really a lost cause, sometimes the supernatural shows up when you need it and gives your creativity a boot in the butt, awkward romance d’aww,) but it managed to writhe out of my hands and thwart all three of them in the end.
My next project is going to try to be more tightly written.
Re-engagement
This is a strange feeling. I have finished my obligatory bit of writing for the day and it is several hours later…and yet I want to go back. And write more. I haven’t felt like this is an uncomfortably long time.
Some part of me suspects this of being a trap. I think that’s the same part that usually says “don’t go chat with that girl” or “don’t try and make new friends” or “don’t try anything new. It might suck.”
I’m gonna do what I always do and ignore that part.
Off to write I go…
Binge Gaming and the Downfall of Creativity
So, my day has so far gone something like this: Bioshock, Bioshock, Bioshock, hey shouldn’t I be wri–nah, Bioshock, Bioshock, Bioshock, holy crap it’s eleven o’clock. And that’s a lot of times I just typed ‘Bioshock’.
It’s a fairly fun game. It’s also eerie and psychotic, and nothing kills my muse like feeling under threat for prolonged periods of time. Especially when I’m trying to write something semi-romantic. So blowing a good chunk of today on gaming was probably the worst thing I could’ve done, motivation-wise.
Ah, well. I’ll pull through, even if I have to force the words single-file onto the page.
Sickly Man! Whaaaat are you doing?
So, writing is for me not an easy task. Most of the time, that is. There are these rare, fantastic moments when everything comes together and I’m motivated and I’m feeling a story and it’s going places. But, most of the time, I find myself swinging the mattock of determination against the mortared wall of inertia. Sometimes the wall cracks and a story slips through. Sometimes the pick bounces off and comes whistling back at my face.
As long as I try, I’m happy.
Of course, there’s the occasional time when I’m not in any condition to write. Several years ago my dog died, and I was a dry well of words for months afterwards. More recently, I’ve discovered how hard it is to throw words onto a page when your body’s fighting off the plague-flu.
Which, I mean, sounds pretty pale in comparison. But it’s still an outside event that manages to slip in between me and my wall. It changes all my priorities from writing and work and getting stuff done to chicken soup and laziness.
Maybe I should see about getting writing reassigned to the ‘lazy stuff’ category. That way I could tell stories and relax. What a fantastic feeling that would be.
On Endings
I’ve never had much luck with endings. The idea that a story is just supposed to snap together in the last few lines sounds like some sort of fabulous magic trick to me. I certainly can’t pull it off, even if there are some writers who can.
So, when it comes time to finish up a piece, I cheat. Now, I don’t mean that in an “I swipe someone else’s writer-magic and apply it liberally to the problem at hand.” That would be much too daring. Instead, I solicit my good friend ambiguity for some help.
A lot of artsy stories that I’ve read use the same cop-out, and every once in a while someone thinks my stuff’s artsy (I can’t imagine why. I write stories about magical destined ladies who go to school in the land of elves.) The thing is, with an ambiguous ending, art doesn’t come from the writer. It springs straight from the reader, who does all the difficult thinking about what it means or what comes next.
I have some pretty sweet readers.
One day, I would like to write a pull-all-the-plot-strands-together-and-tie-them-off-neatly ending, but until then I’m relying on you guys to make my fumbly words sound half-decent.
The Grind
One of the hardest parts of writing–at least, for me–is being willing to work with an idea that you love. When you do, you run the risk of getting it wrong. Of letting a different mix of emotions creep into the story than the ones you had originally envisioned.
If that happens, the best case scenario is that you still get your story written, but it never looks right. And you can’t go back to re-write it because not only could you get it wrong again, but you’ve already imprinted all these ideas from your first draft into the clay of the plot. You have to fight even harder to make it work.
I’ve been wrestling with this problem since well before NaNo started, and one of the cheap solutions that I’ve found is to write something you don’t like. Not something you hate either, but hardly a story that you’d huggle every time you thought about it.
The project that I’ve been pecking away at is one such story. It’s got characters I almost barely care about, a plot that could wander any which way, and a handful of semi-clever lines. It reminds me a lot of my earliest stuff (from back in grade school, when my only goal was to get a couple of cheap laughs out of the reader.)
Unfortunately, I don’t want to switch away from it. I’ve been writing pretty poorly as of late (I wonder dimly if RPG-ing is to blame,) and I’d hate to wreck something I enjoy.
Still…
Why write if there’s no chance at all of you liking it?
I think I’m gonna put up everything I’ve done with this scratch-write tonight, and then switch to a different project tomorrow.
…Then We Shall Fight In The Shade!
In honor of the beginning of NaNoWriMo, I humbly submit unto you, dear reader, this link to the interwebs. I feel that it will make my position clear on this whole business with words.
http://jp.youtube.com/watch?v=LkCNJRfSZBU
*scree-krooch* and various other mechanical booting-up noises…
Well, there’s nothing up here yet. You might’ve noticed that, you cunning person with eyes, you. But there will be. Soon.
Expect maybe hopefully maybe some writing come November. In the mean time, all my stuff’s gonna be over at my ficpress profile: Solemn Coyote.
Cheers until November.
