Reactionary

I’m over the halfway point in my NaNoWriMo novel. Considering my obscene work schedule, schoolwork, starting late and completely doing it as a last minute thing, I’m proud of myself for being a few long writing days from being done. I’ll finish this if it’s the last thing I do. I’ll get to 50,000 words but my new goal is to get the novel finished, not to just drop it at 50,000 and run.

Throughout this process, I’ve also been reading the forums a lot, adding in a note here and there and I’ve actually asked a couple of questions that have, shockingly, been answered. The site allows you to enter your novel info under your profile so everyone can look at it. I’ve looked at a few as well as reading people’s synopses when they ask a question in the forums. I’ve come to a realization, a couple of them. Most of these stories that are being written are so far out, so full of “shocking” twists, so many crazy fantasies with names impossible to pronounce that it’s exhausting reading about them, let alone reading the stories themselves. The characters are quiet, sensitive types or raging loons. I’m not trying to sound like a snob. After all, writing a novel in a month will invariably lead to a lot of bad writing. My own little novel has avowed voice and tense problems. But, it has something the majority of these other novels do not. Subtlety. There are no dragons or dwarves or gay, cocaine-snorting sensitive types who are secretly in love with their pet boa constrictors. 

I used to write a lot of loud, crazy things. They were exercises. What this has shown me is that in spite of my ridiculous life and my neglecting the writing thing for so long, I’m getting better. Subtlety is hard to do. Shocking revelations akin to “Luke, I am your father” are not.

P.S. And I’m making the word count without cheating or having a character sing (which would be so out of character for all of them) or read the phone book or even naming the chapters (numbers were invented for a reason).

November 17th, 2008 | Category: Life |  Print |  Send it | Subscribe to comments | Leave a comment | Trackback URL