Regardless of the virus, I'd probably be struggling right about now anyway. I started the month with a plan to write a literary novel in short stories -- a character study about how the different pieces of our lives add up to the people we become. It was a deeply personal project, and one I hoped would be beautiful and poignant. I wrote roughly 2,500 words on the first day, but none of it compared to the vision in my head for what this book could and should be.
Then on Day 2, I woke up with a head full of zombies, vampires and steampunk. I decided to switch horses mid-stream and write this new idea (which really was a continuation of an old idea) because it would be more "fun."
So, aside from being sick, I've been trying to write this second idea and not having much fun. I feel guilty for abandoning my first idea. Essentially, there's a war going on inside my head between the voice that whispers to me that I'm better than this campy steampunk action/adventure I'm now writing, and the one that derailed me to begin with by telling me I wasn't talented enough or skilled enough to write beautiful prose that would move people.
I am struggling, have been struggling, will continue to struggle to figure out just what kind of writer I am. There are people who tell me to just do what I love, but it's not quite that simple. I love imagining monsters and zeppelins and kick-ass heroines, but I also love the artistic satisfaction of producing a beautiful turn of phrase or writing something that contains some kernel of a universal truth.
So I'm lost and confused and finding little joy in the writing this month, and I don't quite know how to overcome this obstacle. Maybe I'll just work on both.
4 comments:
Could you maybe alternate between the two, and write whichever of them is speaking to you at the moment?
I tried the novel-in-a-month thing back in July, when I was unemployed and it seemed I'd have time for it. I had already read the book and was all psyched up and ready to go.
I lasted only three days and I didn't get 1/30th of the full word count on any of those three days.
My story idea branched in too many different directions (mutually exclusive, of course), some demanding third-person narration and others demanding first-person, etc. and I just couldn't commit to any single one of them without doing an analysis first - which is obviously anathema when you're working on a one-month deadline. I never got it going again, and now that I'm working 50+ hours a week plus the long commute, it's all I can do just to wash my laundry and take out the trash.
I probably should have just ditched the one-month idea and done the analysis. At least then I would have had a story outline. Once I get an outline, I'm usually all set, though I'm also more likely to lose interest. In my mind, once I've worked out the story, the fun part's done.
As for what kind of writer I am, I still don't know either. The bulk of my "writing" these days is comments on blogs, it seems! I most enjoy writing reports (analyzing and distilling a variety of information to introduce a topic to a general audience), but I've never had that as a main job function, and I probably don't have the motivation to make it work as a freelancer.
Fiction is definitely not my thing, but when I actually have a story idea, I enjoy fleshing it out.
Recapping - retelling someone else's story - was fun, but has little artistic prestige and even less marketability.
Thank you both. I think I will just alternate between the two.
I also suspect I'm fighting with a bit of Seasonal Affective Disorder starting to set in with the waning daylight and change from DST. It's a lovely, sunny day, and my last one of vacation before returning to work tomorrow, so I'm going to go walk in the park with my camera for a bit and try to clear my head.
I hope your cold gets better too! THere's nothing like a cold to sap just enough strength out of you to make you feel guilty about all the things you're too tired to do.
Working on both stories is a good idea. Good luck with whichever strategy you choose. I know that having written always feels better than not having written, even if it's not a perfect match to the goal set by NaNoWriMo or whatever.
For whatever it's worth, I don't think the pace of NaNoEtc. is ideal for a story idea that you're really attached to, that you want to do well with careful plotting and beautiful prose (like maybe your literary novel). That's what the NaNo book says, anyway, I vaguely recall, and encourages people to do whatever it takes to get to the word count and not be upset that the result might be dreck. You have to write too much too fast to do justice to your idea.
NaNo probably works better for a story that you make up as you go along. (Or that maybe you've already mapped out in detail beforehand, though the book didn't recommend doing that for some reason.)
I think that's why I cooled on the fast-novel-writing idea so fast - I don't like to expend that much effort on something I'm not attached to. And I don't like to do all of that writing without a firm plan. That means too much more major rework later on if I want the result to be usable. I hate lots of major rework and I hate putting effort into something that isn't usable.
Maybe I should try writing one outline per day for a month, next time I'm unemployed. Or maybe one short story or story treatment per day.
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