Wednesday, November 03, 2010

Well, Hello.

First let me say I'm having major upheavals of existential doubt about neglecting my blog, which I know (some) people read (and thank you for that, if I don't say it often enough, which I know I don't. Thank you for reading and commenting and validating my need for attention because it is really a lovely thing and I adore you. *kisskiss*), to write this novel for NaNoWriMo, because really? I am sucking at the novel writing and no one is ever going to read it, if I even finish it and zOMG what if I neglect the blog for so long that no one ever comes back to read it again and I'm left with a defunct blog and a crap quasi-novel at the end of the month??????!!!!! What am I thinking???!!

Yeah. I know. It might be time to call Dr Xanax.

It turns out, as far as NaNoWriMo goes, I'm awesome with scribbling down pages of thought-process, internal monologue and description. But not so much with the plot, conflict or dialogue. You know, those key components that make a story, well, a story. Thus far, I am 7000 words in and all that's happened so far is a main character driving down a dirt road on her way back to her childhood home, reflecting on the reasons she's not been back in a decade. There is a smattering of dialogue thrown in there as she wanders down the proverbial memory lane, but thaaaat's about it. Not really a super duper action-y page turner. You might say, "Well, Sarah, perhaps its truly striking prose, a character sketch of depth and beauty, preparing your reader for the burst of action to come as she arrives at her childhood home and the story unfolds with great passion and momentum!" And you'd be so kind to say it, but you'd be wrong. It's just not that good.

But that's okay, I keep telling myself. It's not about quality so much as it is about getting it out on paper. This idea has been brewing in my head for a long time and there will be time later to either redo it in its entirety or tuck it away on a shelf somewhere in a file called "At Least I Did It," and forget about it. For now I'm just happy to have written 17 pages of anything, given that I've not devoted that much time to writing anything since my graduate year of college and never to any work of fiction.

Baby steps.

In the mean time, there's this:

and he, fortunately, does not care about whether my writing is any good or not. He's just happy to dress up like Yoda and make silly faces at me in the front yard. So it's all good.


5 comments:

Corinne Cunningham said...

I give you so much credit for going for it :) Who cares if it's crap? You're writing! That's all that matters!

Sarah said...

I agree with Corinne-- don't analyze; just write:)

It probably does't have to be all-or-nothing with the blog-- just post some cute pics of your little guy and give us a quick note about your day.

And really, I bet it's good.

Becca said...

Haha, great costume!!

I bet NaNoWriMo will get better and better as you get into the habit of writing every day! Then I'll say "I knew you when."

gringa said...

Just one page at a time. I seem to remember many famous writers saying this as well as my father (and probably a lot of other guys, like Einstein or some one saying that "Genius is 99% perspiration and 1% inspiration".

Eat naturally said...

Hey Sarah, have you ever read The Bachman Books by Steven King. It's 4 short stories and one of them is about a girl in a room tied up. That's it. Just her internal voice throughout the whole story and it's awesome. I bet what you're writing is better than you think. Keep on keepin on.