On Monday I mentioned what a lovely time I'd had with NaNo. And I did have a lovely time! I hope to do NaNo every November for the rest of my foreseeable writing future. :) But I got to thinking...a dangerous pastime, I know...
Spontaneously giving Jaana telepathy, or abruptly changing Sutter from villain to romantic, was a blast. It was fun. I was laughing in the face of the rules - oh, my poor inner editor - and loving every second it. I could do whatever I wanted, and no one could stop me. Marvelous.
But there was a part of me that missed the planning. I missed the challenge. There is little challenge when anything is possible, when your world is unbuilt, your characters unfleshed. {This does not include the lovely challenge of inserting whatever whenever...and quickly.} I missed figuring out who my characters were. I missed the rules of the world. Randomly giving people telepathy was definitely fun, but it was also very easy.
Do I like easy? Heck yes, I love easy. I'm in the midst of tortorous world-building and character-fleshing for my current dystopian WiP. I definitely have an appreciation for easy.
Because it's hard.
But watching what's come out of the difficulty is worth it. It's only creeping now, peeping its little head out. But it's there. I can see the results of my hard work. And I promise - the results of hard work beat the results of the easy work. Besides the fact that I have a better appreciation for my work, I've also been forced to be creative.
And creativity writes good books.
Will I do NaNo again? Absolutely. It's so much fun. But it's the rest of the year that makes me proud to be a writer.
1 comment:
Okay, give me a moment to gush because I love the Beauty & the Beast reference. :D
Anyway, I like the challenge too! I may need to remind myself of that when I'm in the middle of a WIP (like now) and I'm trying hard to stick by the rules and have it all make sense. I've never done NaNo, but I'm attracted to the idea of letting loose and writing whatever, for the sake of getting 50K done in a coherent story (more or less.) But I also value the hard work I put into my manuscripts, I feel good after I've accomplished something tough, you know?
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