Waiting is the Hardest Part
Three and a half weeks away from the start of November, NaNoWriMo has already brought me a first. I sit here, desperately wanting to get to work on writing, but unable to - not because of a lack of ideas or concentration, but because it's against the rules. You're to start a new project for the event and can't write down anything that'll be inserted verbatim into your novel come November. So, instead, I've been jotting down obscure notes like 'freeze-frame meeting' and 'barstool tutoring - Ancient Android' in my notebook, in the hopes that I'll remember what the hell it was I'd thought of writing.
Personally, this is a situation I've never been in before. I tend to be one of those people who stare at the computer screen (or blank page) dumbly for extended periods of time, occasionally marking down a sentence or two, before hitting on an idea that sends me on a flurry of writing. After that idea is exhausting, I'm back to staring. So, on the one hand, I have high hopes for the early parts of November, since I'm already full up of ideas on how I want specific scenes to feel or how I want them to progress. In the meantime, though, I'm going crazy not being able to write.
If you've done NaNo before, how do you deal with this? Aside from, say, heavily dosing yourself with sedatives throughout the month of October.
Plans for today involve throwing myself headlong into GERA for a couple of hours and then watching a movie about a Jewish kid in the Hitler Youth. That should keep me suitably distracted.
Personally, this is a situation I've never been in before. I tend to be one of those people who stare at the computer screen (or blank page) dumbly for extended periods of time, occasionally marking down a sentence or two, before hitting on an idea that sends me on a flurry of writing. After that idea is exhausting, I'm back to staring. So, on the one hand, I have high hopes for the early parts of November, since I'm already full up of ideas on how I want specific scenes to feel or how I want them to progress. In the meantime, though, I'm going crazy not being able to write.
If you've done NaNo before, how do you deal with this? Aside from, say, heavily dosing yourself with sedatives throughout the month of October.
Plans for today involve throwing myself headlong into GERA for a couple of hours and then watching a movie about a Jewish kid in the Hitler Youth. That should keep me suitably distracted.
7 Comments:
Just write something else while you wait.
I've been writing flash fiction daily of prompts, and I'm outlining my novel at the moment, so my idea is fully formed in my mind to begin writing, even though the first scene is so vivid, and i'm dying to write that.
good luck
share your sense of frustration/anticipation :) should be a fun month! wish you all the best for it.
cheers.
My fingers are itching to start typing as well! However, being so full of ideas one month and not allowed to write also means I'm "forced" to think and rethink them, which in turn ends up in me pinpointing plot flaws and little details that wouldn't work in a novel in the long run. So yeah, I'm feeling frustrated and desperately wanting to start, but I also know it can be for the best! (And in the meantime, I write down ideas, outlines, chapters' plans, etc, even if it's not exactly the same.)
Yeah, like Benjamin Solah said, you are allowed to outline and plan the novel. That's what I'm doing.
I tend to trawl through random images on Google. More often than not I find inspiration from those :)
Cool blog.
I've signed up to NaNo for the first time. I feel a little of what you describe: a strange, new craving to just get on with it. Actually, getting started on the writing is always my hardest obstacle; I have ideas aplenty, just no ability to chain myself to the keyboard. I'm hoping that the NaNo experience will teach me something new about that. In fact, I'm pretty convinced even if I fail to reach the "winner" status, that something good will come of this. (Not sure exactly when I will be writing, as I'm currently in a mad work-all-hours-in-a-day state with my day job! I'm choosing delusion over reality though).
Post a Comment
<< Home