It's day 14 and I have just over 26,000 words written of my novel. I'm doing a good job staying ahead of the daily minimums but I'm hitting the difficult middle of my story and definitely starting to slump a bit. Interrestingly enough, I'm not the only one who finds middles challenging. In a pep talk email this past week, author John Green (
Looking for Alaska,
An Abundance of Katherines) had this to say about writing the middle of a novel:
Why do I quit halfway in? I get tired. It's not fun anymore. The story kind of sucks, and it's hard to sit down every day and spend several hours eating from a giant bowl of suck. And most of all, like the kid who spends hours preparing plastic armies for war, I enjoy setting things up more than I enjoy the battle itself. To finish something is to be disappointed. By definition, abandoned novels are more promising than completed ones.
You have likely reached the moment in this insane endeavor when you need a rock-solid answer to the question of why, precisely, you are trying to write a novel in a month. You have likely realized that your novel is not very good, at least not yet, and that finishing it will be a hell of a lot less fun than starting it was.
And it's true. Starting, for me, is the fun part. I like introducing characters much more than I like giving them purpose, destiny, and fulfilment. But at the same time, I've passed the halfway mark. I've started something that deserves to be finished. If I've written 25,000 words in half a month, I can certainly write 50,000 in thirty days. Here's to the second half!
Posts
November 14, 2010 at 10:49 PM
Keep going, I hope you have lot of fun. Next year I'm going to join. I like reading posts from those who have entered NaNoWriMo. Can't wait to see how the rest of your NaNoWriMo experience goes.
November 15, 2010 at 9:25 AM
I loved that pep talk. It fit perfectly. And - yes you can! Though I'm not so sure of myself. At least not a editable and printable book. I'm surely stuck and don't know what to do about it. I didn't write anything yesterday but hope I can work through it today.
November 15, 2010 at 3:13 PM
Congrats on all the progress so far and good luck for the rest.
Are you enjoying writing?
November 15, 2010 at 5:54 PM
Here's to perseverance!
November 16, 2010 at 11:21 AM
Great work on NaNo - the end is closer than the beginning now. Hang in there and good luck!
November 16, 2010 at 3:24 PM
Thanks so much for the encouragement! I really do have fun writing and there's a great sense of satisfaction to look back at the end of the month and know that I created something that would never exist if I hadn't taken the plunge!