I'm currently writing a novel for NaNoWriMo. It isn't going to be great. Maybe it isn't even going to be good -- but I'm writing it anyway, because writing something is better than writing nothing. It takes a lot of effort to simply keep writing every day. I'm already stressed from the rest of the life, and the looming deadline and the massive wordcount required aren't providing the escapism one might expect. I haven't written in several months, and this jumping right into it makes me even more anxious. Is this what taking responsibility for an actual, life-changing undertaking feels like? If I succeed, this is going to be the first novel for me. I've written one-page short stories before, when life hasn't started throwing responsibilities at me yet, but this is another level entirely. I've never finished a project before. If this succeeds -- if I put out a novel, no matter how bad it might end up -- this is going to be a life-changing experience... if I start doing things differently. It's the science of life: you have a theory about the way things are supposed to work. You test it by organizing a massive poll, the kinds you've never done before. If your theory is proven successful, things are going to change for you in ways you never thought were possible. I'm frustrated with my own inability to do things I want to do, whether it's from depression, poor work ethics, laziness or plain apathy from life weariness. This is my opportunity to prove those deep-seated assumption and habits wrong.
Oh, I've tried that. I've tried everything there is in the book. Right now, I'm motivated by the sheer anger at the disappointment my results have continued to prove so far. It's not a mindset issue. I want to do it. I just can't, -- which is what led to believe depression to be at least one of the issues.
Procrastination is the problem I'm working on right now- my aha moment was that I have a huge fear of disappointment, because disappointment sucks ups the fun of the actually finishing. At least, it gets really hard for me to work on something once the deadline has already past, and thinking about it, that's what usually happens whenever I try Nanowrimo.
I am extremely not a fan of NaNoWriMo. You're outlining exactly what's wrong with it - "if I vomit words on a page I will have a book." And you're outlining exactly why it's wrong - "is this real life?" If you folded a thousand paper cranes, at least you'd have a thousand paper cranes when you were done. You could put them on a wall and people would go "cool! A thousand paper cranes! That must have been a lot of work!" If you knitted a blanket, you could wrap yourself up in it and go "and now I have something to keep myself warm." More importantly, if that blanket started to look like ass you'd go "hmm. I should probably start the last eight rows over because this thing is starting to look like a fishing net." But with NanoWriMo it's always about "oh god don't revise or else you'll never make it to our arbitrary goal!" Thing of it is? You're either going to know better than to subject your friends to your "novel" or you're going to make things awkward. Either way, nobody is going to enjoy it. And here you are, putting the weight of the world on a ridiculous word-vomit draft that has nothing whatsoever to do with your core competencies, because everyone is doing it. Has it ever struck you as weird that there's no "national novel reading month?"
Only backward countries would do such a thing. It's advertised in all schools and libraries, fairly popular at that. It's the fifth* year when November is our national reading month. While it lasts you get access to free books and audiobooks and is sponsored by our Ministry of Culture. * - I initially wrote 'second', but was mistaken. It started in 2013Has it ever struck you as weird that there's no "national novel reading month?"
You've managed to turn "extremely not a fan" into an understatement. Here's an idea. Stop writing. Don't allow yourself to write anything for the next 30 days, not even notes in the notebook (well, maybe... but only when you feel like it). Keep telling yourself it's tedious and just too big of a job to start now, and that you'll definitely start once you feel like really writing. Start fantasizing about the things you could be writing about -- all those great stories, and all those particularly spectacular moments that express the characters perfectly and drive the plot in the most natural way... The people you describe in that quote? That's me. And this is my opportunity to finish something. Is it going to be shit? I don't think so; that's not the way I write things. I'm not even sure it's going to be -- but in the end, at least I know I gave it a decent effort. Besides. Nobody's saying I should stop at the end of November, or that I can't edit it further.NaNyNaNyNooNoo is the worst piece of shit waste of time I have ever encountered.
I find that it is largely entertained by people without the stamina to finish anything
I do not believe there was ever a time where I was inspired to write all those particularly spectacular moments down in a notebook. Writing has always been this spiteful thing I do better than other people to make them STFU. Eventually it became this thing people thought I could do for money, then it became this thing people paid me to do. I haven't written in eight months. I've been waiting to hear back from my agent, and it's been ridiculous just getting her a goddamn draft. I'll say this - as someone who has always been externally motivated to write, y'all are fucking insane if you really think that if you want it bad enough you'll get it. Or, more importantly, that if you arrange your life in this way or that you'll accomplish something you wouldn't accomplish otherwise. Write for an audience. Write to respect their time. Write in a way that they want to read it. Write to put your ideas in their head. Write for as long as it takes, for as long as you're productive, then stop. Because - and here's the bitch of it - if you are dependent on contrived deadlines and forces to get you to write, you will never truly write. I once wrote 15,000 words of a screenplay on a flight from Japan to San Francisco. It got me signed to William Morris. But hey - I know a guy who once wrote a 20,000 word screenplay in 2 days because he showed 5 loglines to a prospective agent and she asked to read the one he hadn't written. You can keep going. You can edit it further. You can do all these things. But good god, man. If you have any respect for yourself don't swaddle your craft in a smothering blanket of metooism.
Where do you find the stuff you read? What do you like about it? Figure out how those outlets get their material. If it's magazines, they probably accept submissions. If it's novels, they probably have agents. If it's online fanfic, it's the crud that floated to the surface. WRITE THAT. Write to that length, write to satisfy that itch, and write as if you were trading vital only-get-it-once lifeforce for the act of writing it. Because you are. If there is anything you would rather be doing than writing, do that instead. Because it's not an obligation that you cream through 50,000 pages a month once a year. It's that thing that you do better than anybody you know, and that gives you a feeling unlike any other.
I've definitely realized I've never really been interested in reading someone else's Nanowrimo writing. I just try to be polite, it's still a huge accomplishment to finish that much writing at once. But my writing is fucking great, suck my dick.
It's about a young woman nicknamed "Rosa", after the flower that seemingly grows in her right eye socket. She lives in a world where, until very recently, people like her -- the Younger Nations -- lived near, though with very few contacts, people of unimaginable powers. They were titans, and the rumors of their power were magnificent. Their magic was far beyond what the Younger Nations could imagine, and the glimpses of it struck awe into the witness. Then... the titans fought among each other, and in the end, only few remnants of their living remained. The Younger Nations were not foolish, and went to seize whatever power remained for themselves. Most of whom are now known as prospectors have instead met their demise at the ruins, unaware of many dangers the titans' structures posed. Those who succeed despite those dangers are revered and misunderstood due to their nature: who if not someone with black magic in them can thrive where others fall so easily? The Younger Nations, indeed, are young enough to believe something like that. I was fascinated with Tyranny's setting: it's a fantasy world where people have only recently discovered ironworking, and where magic, while a point of study, is still an object of fascination due to its mystery. It's the Younger Nations part of Rosa's world, where the "titans" are these hyper-advanced alien people with technology according to Clarke's third law. The scientists of the Younger Nations are struggling to understand how exactly the titans' devices operate, and mostly rely on cargo cultism and superstition to operate the devices with any efficiency. After the titans have vanished into thin air -- after much thunder and lightning, so to speak -- they left behind a land ravaged with scars. It's an otherwise ordinary terrain -- surreallistically so -- that has many things of odd properties growing on it, similar to Strugatsky brothers' Roadside Picnic. It has ordinary green grass covered in white mold that, upon contact, spreads through the body and shreds the cellular structure as it goes: a continuous necrosis where the victim feels everything until the mold touches the brain. The scars is only one of the dangers a traveler -- or a prospector, for that matter -- has to evade. So, Rosa is a prospector. She dives into the ruins of the titans and brings whatever she can carry to the scientists of her nation. One day, she takes her gear and moves to the ruins again... and doesn't return the same night. Next day, by the twilight, she's limping to the city, bruised, beaten and bleeding. The last thing she remembers is trying to crawl into her house, when she loses consciousness... ...and wakes up in the middle of nowhere, with no supplies and a knife as the only tool -- and a flower growing out of where her eye's supposed to be. Amidst the sea of green grass, she has no water, no food and barely a way to orient herself. Without a way to guess which land is closer (the countries are basically circled around what used to be the titan territory, so you're likely to find someone alive if you reach the edge of the continent), she picks north and starts moving. That's what I've gotten to so far. Truth be told, I'm writing by the seat of my pants, so even I don't know what's going to happen next most of the time.