NaNoBlog 2002

NaNoBlog 2002
30 days. 50,000 words. No sweat.

Monday, November 04, 2002

A few things that have been rattling around inside my head:

- How come I can think of so much more to blog about than write about? I still haven't written a word on my novel today, with only 2.5 hours left in the day. But I've been taking notes for the blog!

- Although I'm paralyzed by my active dislike of my story so far & my confusion of which direction to take the story in now, I'm starting to realize that with 37,000 words left to kill, I can afford to experiment a bit. So perhaps I can take my plot in one direction now and somewhere completely different later, and fix it all in revisions.

- It's hard to type when your fingers are cold. Mine aren't working too well right now.

- It also doesn't help that NaNoWriMo falls in a month when it's just started getting dark earlier. The early darkness, combined with the fact that it's uncharacteristically cool & rainy for Texas, puts me in kind of a dismal mood.)

- It struck me that maybe my character needs something to love. Even if it's just music, or drawing, or a certain TV show...anything. She doesn't care about anything enough, so it's hard to find her sympathetic. Does a character need to love something? I said before I've thought of her as being a bit like Daria, and also like Enid from the movie Ghost World (though not nearly as well-realized as either of them!). Why do we care about their stories when neither of them seem to really love anything?

- I've been bummed out lately by the tendency of writers to eat their own. One writing group I've frequented has some real "snipers," as one other person there called them, who like to rain on everyone's parade for whatever reason, and make it no fun to visit anymore. And over there, I was made to feel like a loser for not writing enough. But lately on the NaNo forums, I've noticed some griping about people writing too much--so you just can't win! People who write less than you are hopeless slackers, and people who write more are not like "the rest of us" or something. I don't think it's really prevalent yet, but in some NaNo discussions I've seen almost an us vs. them thing, with the strugglers venting about the people with higher than average word counts. I feel like one of the struggling "us," and hate the idea that just by getting off to a fast start, some people might see me as one of "them." I know I'm not in the 35,000-word category or something like that, but last I checked I was about number 51. I felt deflated by some of the attitudes I saw, like I wouldn't be welcome to gripe anymore. And maybe that's part of why I'm not writing. Like I want to drop down in the word count list so I'll still be one of the "us." The only reason to write a novel at the same time as 12,000 other people, in my view, is for the camaraderie, encouragement, support, and extra accountability and challenge, so I don't want to find myself without that sort of encouragement.

- My 4-year-old started & finished a whole book today. It's called Shapes, & he made it for his best friend & plans to mail it to her. Not surprisingly, each page has a shape. Except for the last page, which has "a number thing." He wrote the names of each shape by copying them from other shapes books we have. Oddly, he wrote the word "rectangle" as a complete mirror image--right to left, with all the letters backwards. He didn't notice this until I pointed it out, & still didn't seem to quite get what I was saying. I have no idea what it means, if anything.

- Is it cheesy to put a romance in my novel? I thought it was, and I was sure that my character was not going to be involved in any sort of romance, even if she has a few passing attractions. So far everyone around her seems to be pairing off, which was not my intention, but I was determined to keep her out of it, since it's definitely not a romance novel. But...I don't know, maybe it would help. When I was 15 (her age), I was completely hormonal. I couldn't not think in those terms. Although, as I'm typing this, I suddenly fail to remember why I was even wondering about this! I can't recall any potential romance I was considering for my main character. It does seem beside the point. I guess I was considering having her obsessing about someone from afar, but I'm not sure how that would add much right now.

posted by Alison | 9:35 PM