Calm down! Calm down! I know the news spells shock and horror for all of you! All none of you, that is, seeing as how I haven't been writing anything here regularly enough for people to check in. But still! In the interest of all interested parties, I will attempt to explain why I'm chalking up NaNoWriMo 2009 as a fail on my part.
What is NaNoWriMo for? It depends on who you ask, but generally speaking, it's to set aside time for writing 1,667 words every day for 30 days for a total of 50,000 words by the end of the month. Write fast, write hard, don't worry about errors and plot inconsistencies. JUST WRITE. That, to me, screams of brain dump. You have a story floating around in your mind and you're not sure what you want to do with it, and NaNoWriMo gives you a fun month of pep talks and forums and word counts to speed you along the path of just puking words all over your paper until something emerges that is close to a storyline. (Amateurs think this method is a joke, but brain dumping is a vital step to building a coherent story!)
Well, to be perfectly honest, I think the story I've been writing for the past 3 NaNoWriMos has finally emerged from the brain dump phase. This year, nothing changed. I like what I'd written previously and I was just rehashing it with different words that meant the same thing. There were no vast changes and no glaring plot holes and I was getting bored writing what I already knew. I know they say that if you get discouraged or stuck, you should intentionally skip ahead in the storyline and fill in the gaps later, but that wouldn't have worked this time.
I've got enough of a story arc now that I need to worry about collecting my ideas, not pouring out more of them. I've got to start worrying about making sure my characters have personality and consistency and that they're all interacting properly and in the correct order. Not only that, but I need to actually start reading some work by authors I'd like to influence what I write.
This year, I noticed that I focus an extreme amount of writing on strictly dialogue as a way of introducing information to the reader, and that's bad. There's no glimpse into the inner workings of a character and there's no sense of discovery for the reader, and I need to work on that very badly. I kind of accept that my dialogue method is my style, but it's not a style I want. Seriously, I had pages of size 10 Times New Romans of nothing but two people talking in order to build what the world looks like. I don't think that's good.
But there's my reason for my late quitting of NaNoWriMo 2009 at only 25,000ish words. In the mix are a few other reasons like school wanting me to write 3 papers by next Wednesday. I finally decided that me resting while I'm a bit under the weather this week is more important than cramming 10,000 word days AND 3 papers this weekend. Not only school, but I don't think I liked the whole "you get a special prize for winning NaNoWriMo" thing when they announced they'd be giving out 50% off codes for Scrivener. It's a nice thought for spurring people onward, but what's stopping people from faking 50,000 words, anyway? I think giving away prizes like that are kind of shifting the focus away from "writing for writing's sake" and I didn't like that. Don't get me wrong, I'd like to have Scrivener if I had a Mac, but the fact that I'm feeling sad for not finishing so I could get the prize makes me remember a little bit of why I stopped.
But my primary reason is: ENOUGH BRAINSTORMING THIS PUPPY! It's time for some serious work.
