The slog

So how's NaNoWriMo year seven going for me, you ask?

Blarg.

Yep, that sums it up nicely (or not so nicely). I've never written such a wandering, inane mess of attempted scenes. Thankfully. I'll give myself the opportunity to write utter crap this one time because hey, gotta try everything once, right?

Maybe something will come of it--some scene that jumps out at me that could be turned into a short story or a novella. One thing is for sure, it's not going to end up anywhere near novel territory as far as a workable amount of coherent words.

So what the hell is going so wrong this year?

I had an idea. It seemed like a good one. I had a beginning point, a character, a setting, and knew where I had to end it. You have to understand, this is way more planning than I usually put into any NaNo novel so I thought I'd be way ahead of the game. It turns out, not so much.

Jackson, my intended MC didn't have the same fun personality to write as Joshua (from A Broken Race, of which this new story was supposed to be a prequel).

So I switched to Grace, whom I'd had no intention of using for POV character at all, but hell, Jackson wasn't working so why not, and there could be some love interest there...maybe? Grace worked for a while, but after she took three pages to eat a meal of crackers, I realized that she wasn't the key to breathing life into the story I'd intended to tell.

Let's try Jerry. No, didn't intend to POV him either, but he seemed to be working and he carried the story on for a good while after I'd ditched Grace. The words started to come. Oh hallelujah! But then he dried up. Crap.

Eva! Eva didn't even exisit in the story until Grace needed a direct antagonist. Eva was doing wonders for my lagging enthusiasm. Then a prompt to add an unexpected child came up. YES! Eva had a sick child, and this I could work with! Words happened. Story happened. We learned things. We even got a bigger antagonist to deal with. I was just about jumping for joy and then I wrote a really sad scene for poor Eva and I had to put her aside for a little while before she could feasibly take on the next part of the plot. Which meant I needed to write: "Time passes" or  jump POVs again.

Back to Jackson, Grace or Jerry? None of them enticed me, but the angry-on-the-inside-priest from Jackson's chapter did.  I was all excited about writing Father Frederick for a while but now...now the story is dragging again.

Which is why we're back to: Blarg. It's just not clicking and I know this story not going to amount to much for all the slogging I'm forcing myself to do. However, it is getting the creative writing juices flowing again and I am carving out time to write from my otherwise over-filled day. I am accomplishing part of what I set out to do this month. So I'll give this story another 5k to shape up or not and if it doesn't, I'll fill my other 25k with one of my other countless projects that needs finishing or one of the short story prompts on the sidelines that needs starting.

So take that Novel-that-would-be, either click or get off my keyboard.