Yesterday, I began a story that's been simmering in my head since April 2009. It had been on my mind lately, and I was like, "Why not do that one for NaNo?"
I have an answer to that question: It's not ready.
I wrote over 2000 words on it yesterday, for NaNo. My lovely little bar was blue. It was pretty. I was excelling. Today I, tried to continue my progress. I got about 600 words written.
It wasn't working. I was trying, and trying, but the story wasn't flowing. There was no voice. For me, voice catches, like a gear on a bicycle. Pedal, pedal, pedal, and wait for the gear to catch. Sometimes you can keep cycling, spinning the pedals, coasting to a stop, because the gear won't catch. Sometimes it catches right away.
But for this story, it wasn't catching. And a story with no voice is just...pointless. {I realize there are times when a story without voice should and can be pursued. But this wasn't one of those times.}
So I switched. Today I switched stories. I switched to something else, something I never expect to get published. Something not so heavy. Something romantic. Something cliche. Exactly what I wanted to be writing.
It's had. I'm now a day behind. Ouch. But I could not, I just could not fathom writing Story #1 for the next 30 days. It wasn't fair to the story, and it wasn't fair to me, because NaNo is my writing vacation!
What about you? Have your gears caught {if you're doing NaNo}?
2 comments:
Sounds like you found the right story to tackle. Hey, at least you didn't discover this on November 20th!
I'm sure your second story will be awesomesauce.
I'm really excited becuse the story I started a week or so before Nano (don't worry, I don't count those words) is really taking off.
And I know what you mean about voice. You're right-on there. Without a strong voice, the story is going nowhere fast. I pray your new one will catch fire and turn into publishable brilliance! :)
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