Sunday, November 01, 2015

It's novel writing time!


So it's 1 Nov. The start of NaNoWriMo.

AM I REALLY DOING THIS?? What if this novel turns out to be the ultimate suckfest of all suckfests? The last novel took three rewrites, four rounds of edits, and a little more than a year to complete. Do I really want to go through this again??

There is nothing more daunting than a blank page with the cursor blinking expectantly at you. START WRITING. START WRITING NOW, it seems to say. And you quail in your bedroom slippers, because there are just so many paths your story can take. There are just so many ways this story can go wrong. So many ways it will drive you to tear out your hair and despair over its future.

But then you write with the end in sight. You think about the metaphorical pot of gold waiting for you at the end, and it is the only thing that keeps you going, even on days when you plod and trudge through the slush.

It's an arduous journey, writing a novel. You hold it in your hands, and you single-handedly direct the course of the story, dictate your characters' lives, determine how they will influence and transform each other. Everything that happens - every outcome - is ON YOU. Hey, no pressure.

But what even. We all know I will put myself through this anyway. Maybe not at a pace of 50K words a month, but that story WILL come out somehow, and it will take the time it needs. The first draft will inevitably suck, like first drafts always do, and maybe the second and third ones will too. But a story will be cracked out of those drafts, whether discarded or revised, and in the end it will all be worth the time and angst.


So soldier on, NaNo-ers!

1 comment :

Whiskoffee said...

keep on writing. :)