update

[flamingsword]

Not to disparage myself or anything, but I'm LAME! I've still only got about 3,500 words written in the actual story, although the scenes that need to be written are now chaptered out on sliced-up post-its and pretty much every character has a name, even the ones who only get mentioned once. The world-building is mostly done, it just needs financial laws for characters to fight over and one more bit role to act as a go-between for two characters to avoid each other.

I'm really thinking that the next time I do NaNoWriMo (and there will be a next time) I'm going to do all of this BEFOREHAND. Or possibly just write my autobiography, which won't need plotting out. I'm pretty resigned to not actually being done on time, but I already have enough of it done to not give up on it, which was sort of the whole point of doing this.

Making myself finish something is not something I'm good at or familiar with. I like to draw things out and change them so they keep going. And knowing that I have an end in mind is very uncomfortable. It kind of makes me feel like I've dropped and broken something, but I'm not sure where that's coming from.

I have dread. WTF, you guys? Seriously. So I guess I'll keep doing angsty, uncomfortable shit until I figure out what my damn problem is.

ETA: I'm still writing it, and I'm still hoping for a miraculous finish that brings me in on time. I'm just expecting the real-time ACTUAL finish to be in January.

Comments

For What It's Worth

[lord-of-entropy.livejournal.com]

Neil Gaiman opines that short stories are good because they teach young writers how to finish things, a skill they need to practice.

Noooo!

[bardkris.livejournal.com]

You mustn't give up. I'm behind, too, but we can do it. We can catch up. I have a friendthat finished 45000 in the last week. Buck up, soldier. You can do this. Do not become resigned. If you're going to fail, fail spectacularly!

Re: Noooo!

[flamingsword.livejournal.com]

Oh, I'm not giving up, I'm just berating myself for avoiding myself. Self-flagellation is a wonderful motivator.

No. Writing the book. I've given up new-boyfriend time for this thing, it's fucking getting done.

[kohagal.livejournal.com]

What is NaNoWriMo?

"Making myself finish something is not something I'm good at or familiar with. I like to draw things out and change them so they keep going."

This exactly is me. I'm looking up to you to finish this. :-D

[flamingsword.livejournal.com]

National Novel Writing Month (http://www.nanowrimo.org/). Check it out, then do it with me next year!

[kohagal.livejournal.com]

Oh, uh, I suck at writing. No creativity in that department.

[snake-easing.livejournal.com]

My nanowrimo took about a year, but I finished it. And then rewrote it later so that it became a novella. I'm extremely happy with it now.

[flamingsword.livejournal.com]

I expect this will become a queer-friendly YA steampunk fantasy novella by the time I'm done. But if I write 50k words and edit out the pointless bits, at least two thirds of it should be usable. Or so I'm hoping.

Thanks for commenting, ninja-author supreme!

[wv-wildchild77.livejournal.com]

I've writen short stories, poems, songs since I was in grade school. In high school I started getting all these ideas for books that I wanted to write. But after a few years of starting books I realized something. I was writing scenes, not books. I'd write the beginning, then think of some AWESOME thing i wanted to happen in the middle or end, so I'd skip ahead of myself and write them. Once I had the "fun" parts writen, I'd get bored with it and stop writing. After a few years of doing this, and a very large file on my computer of worthless scenes, I realized....this doesn't work! When I wrote Empath Trials, I wrote it beginning to end. I didn't skip ahead and write scenes. I didn't even think of the scenes ahead of what I was writing. I developed the characters, or rather let them develop themselves, then I let them unfold the story, piece by piece. If I thought of a scenes I might like, I led the characters to it. I didn't leave them behind to write it without them. At one point early in the book I thought of something I wanted to happen near the end. As I got nearer the end, I realized that scene wouldn't work, b/c my character had changed so much through out the book, that it just wouldn't be in character for her to do that scene.

So my advice is to start at the beginning and take it step by step.

Jotting down a scene idea or a happening on a LITTLE piece of paper to post in sight for later use is ok. as long as it's only an idea, and that you'll only use it if your character decideds to go that path when it comes to it.

Develope the character/s and let them develope the story. You're just the writer, they are the stars.

[flamingsword.livejournal.com]

The story happens across less than a week, chronologically. The characters come to realizations, but don't change much as people. It's a plot-driven story, rather than a character-driven one. That's not to say that I don't have character development, but I know how to construct the characters so that they need to do what I have plotted for them.

I think I come at this from a very different stylistic place. I'm not writing the 'fun' parts, because unfortunately even I cannot make an interspecies sex scene work in a young adult novel. But I have a message to send on the importance of belonging to yourself. The way that people interact and make their decisions in this is what I'm trying to show: the other options that people don't use, and the fact that binary belonging/not belonging is not the way to go.