Sunday, November 6, 2011

Day... what is it, 6 now?

So my novel writing is not going well. It is not nearly as long as it should be by now, and I'm finding I lack motivation to do this. I am finding that my story is more of a short story than a novel. I think of ways to add to it, but I lack the desire to write about those added situations. This is all much more difficult than I thought! ...not that I thought it would be a breeze...

I start to write, but I get sick of it, get itchy all over, or can't figure out how to move the story along. I wrote a paragraph like eight times tonight and deleted it just as many times. My target should be 1,667 words per day, but I'm nowhere near that. I didn't write at all the last two days, and it is looking like I won't do much tonight, either. If I look at the word count I need to make up, it's a bit daunting. If I spread it out over the whole month, it just means I have to write 1,888 words per day instead, which is less daunting, but if I can't get 1,667 words out, how do I add 220-ish words each day from here on out??

I keep thinking maybe I should scratch this story and try something different. Something where I don't have any idea of what will happen, so I can sort of make it up more as I go along. It will mean all this writing I have done so far is wasted, but maybe it's worth it??? Thinking about it is making me itchier...

***update at 12:06 a.m. I restarted. Or rather, started something new. And I wrote over 1,900 words tonight! I might stick with this new novel. But I'm even more afraid to tell you what it's about than the last story I was working on, so... we'll see how it goes and how I feel about it in the morning.

2 comments:

Chelsea said...

Well, if your writing is as good as you writing ABOUT your writing, then I want to read it. I haven't had a chance to look at the rules or anything, so I don't know what this is all about other than what you have said on here, but I think whatever gets your creative juices going, I say it is worth it! Go you!

rebekah said...

Last year I wrote 30,000 words on a novel, and I was HATING it. Another 20,000 words would have killed me. So I started a new story and finished with 50,000 words between them. So don't scrap your first novel! Add it into the word count total. At least, that's what I would do. Possibly that could be concidered cheating...but my sanity was on the line.