Not this time ...

Well. I just learned my short story for the FiF contest didn't make the final cut. Sad, sad, sad ... then I found a link to one of the finalist's stories in the comments section of Dave Long's blog. I read the story, to see what the 'competition' was like, why my story didn't make it. All I can say is - awesome writing! Congratulations, Mike!! If this a measure of the calibre of the entrants, then it's no wonder I'm not among them.

That set me thinking about the writing I am doing now, however. The NaNo stuff. As mentioned below, I got going - and then I got stuck! I have the outline, I have the characters, I know the conflicts, but still I got stuck. And so I've been stressed out for the last couple days, knowing I was falling way behind the daily word count. (By now I should be up at somewhere round 6680 words, and I'm only at about 1500!)

Why? Because I don't like what I'm writing and I don't like the way the characters are behaving. Under the pressure of just churning out masses of words, I'm losing sight of the nuances of the characters - their attitudes, their accents, their hearts - the small things that make them really real. They're starting to walk and talk like cardboard cutouts instead of real people. I find I'm writing scenes just to 'tell what happens' and I'm forgetting about things like 'the turn' (McKee), the scene and sequel structure (Dwight Swain), pacing and so much more. All the things I've spent such a long time learning.

So why am I pulverizing myself just to turn out a badly-written 50 K novel, when what I really want to do is learn how to write the way Mike does, to write prose that sings and stirs the heart?

So I guess I should thank Dave for not choosing my short story for the final cut! If something I labored long and hard over isn't good enough yet, then a 50K novel written under pressure is certainly not going to be something I will feel proud of. I already have 2 other unfinished, unpublished novels gathering moss on my hard drive - do I really want another?

Maybe not.

Elleann.

Just unravelling today ...