So, as I’ve previously mentioned, this blog was started in part to help me build habits. Those habits are geared towards one thing; successfully finishing the NaNoWriMo.org Novel in a month challenge. Needless to say, that challenge isn’t easy.
To successfully complete the challenge you need to complete a 50,000 word work in the month of November. Managing this requires averaging just under 1700 words a day. I can write that much fairly easily, but doing so repeatedly has been difficult. I’ll get distracted,think I can make the balance of a missed day up, and the the next thing I know I’m unable to finish.
There’s more to writing a novel than just writing of course. One of the big stumbling blocks I am concerned about this year is finding a story I feel I can reliably stretch to the full length. In the past I’ve had ambitious, multi-part stories that could easily go the distance. Usually i get some idea around May and then take the intervening time between then and the beginning of the contest to flesh out the details.
This year I’ve had no such idea. I’ve had story ideas (as evidenced by my previous entry, which went from conception to full-blown story in around 4 hours), but nothing I feel could make a full-blown book. I could try to resurrect one of my previous ideas, but that feels like cheating and I’m not in the same mindset that I was in when I started those stories.
They stories I have been writing lately have been short. They’ve also been fairly dark. In the last 2 months have been between 2000-7000 words and quite violent. I’d like to change both of those things for the NaNoWriMo challenge.
The story I started last year was a space exploration piece where the violence was incidental to the story being told. The three stories I’ve written recently have violence in some sort as a central feature. In trying to come up with an idea that I can stretch to a full-novel length I’ve been trying to escape my darker urges and find something I won’t find so depressing to write.
Maybe that’s my problem. Breaking out of a mindset is never easy. I don’t really feel all that depressed right now, but it seems that at least some small part of me is in a very dark place at the moment. While that does concern me, it does make me wonder if I would get a better story if I just went with my darker urges.
Well, we’ll have to see how this sort of thing goes. I do have the inkling of one story in mind, but I don’t think I could stretch it to the full length. I’m not sure it would be short enough to use as a blog entry. Perhaps soon we’ll see it up here as part of a multi-parter
Until then, I’ll just have to keep imagining.
To successfully complete the challenge you need to complete a 50,000 word work in the month of November. Managing this requires averaging just under 1700 words a day. I can write that much fairly easily, but doing so repeatedly has been difficult. I’ll get distracted,think I can make the balance of a missed day up, and the the next thing I know I’m unable to finish.
There’s more to writing a novel than just writing of course. One of the big stumbling blocks I am concerned about this year is finding a story I feel I can reliably stretch to the full length. In the past I’ve had ambitious, multi-part stories that could easily go the distance. Usually i get some idea around May and then take the intervening time between then and the beginning of the contest to flesh out the details.
This year I’ve had no such idea. I’ve had story ideas (as evidenced by my previous entry, which went from conception to full-blown story in around 4 hours), but nothing I feel could make a full-blown book. I could try to resurrect one of my previous ideas, but that feels like cheating and I’m not in the same mindset that I was in when I started those stories.
They stories I have been writing lately have been short. They’ve also been fairly dark. In the last 2 months have been between 2000-7000 words and quite violent. I’d like to change both of those things for the NaNoWriMo challenge.
The story I started last year was a space exploration piece where the violence was incidental to the story being told. The three stories I’ve written recently have violence in some sort as a central feature. In trying to come up with an idea that I can stretch to a full-novel length I’ve been trying to escape my darker urges and find something I won’t find so depressing to write.
Maybe that’s my problem. Breaking out of a mindset is never easy. I don’t really feel all that depressed right now, but it seems that at least some small part of me is in a very dark place at the moment. While that does concern me, it does make me wonder if I would get a better story if I just went with my darker urges.
Well, we’ll have to see how this sort of thing goes. I do have the inkling of one story in mind, but I don’t think I could stretch it to the full length. I’m not sure it would be short enough to use as a blog entry. Perhaps soon we’ll see it up here as part of a multi-parter
Until then, I’ll just have to keep imagining.
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