Hey, I'm going away for the weekend - should be back Monday, maybe Tuesday (don't have work until Tuesday night! YAY). This means I will have limited computer access, so I'll be trying to keep up the word count by hand. Obviously this means typing up time too, so I'm not sure when I'll next get to update. It might be over the weekend, it might not. Fingers crossed I won't end up too much behind!

I've had a blank space of time today and I've been working on the Nano. I don't know whether it's symptomatic of week two, which they said is the hardest week, but I've become pretty disenchanted with what I've written. Partly, I think, it's because I have so little control over what I'm doing, I'm flying by the seat of my pants and making it up as it goes along. It probably doesn't help that I'm behind target and it's been a hell of a bad week - although next week is looking clearer.

Basically, I've realised that not only do I not really understand my own characters, but that I don't have anything for them to do. The premise of the story is okay, but there was only one little strand of plot in the whole thing and I don't really know how to address it, but the real problem is the complete lack of structure. Usually, I know what I'm trying to do with a story - I'm playing with the timeline, or the narration, or whatever. And that's worked just fine with short stories, but I don't have the same amount of control over this story - the pacing seems wrong, too slow to get moving in one timeline and stalling in the other, even though that's the one where the plot is.

I'm not giving up, I know I just have to push through these difficulties, maybe by just continuing to write even if I don't know what I'm doing. But I'm finding it harder to judge the tone and the style than I usually do and it feels like what I wanted is slipping away and the story is just plodding on inelegantly and pointlessly. And the more words I add to it, the more I dislike it.

Advice please! Or just tell me to shut up and stop wingeing, stop wasting words on posts like these and use them in the story instead.


Edit: "Plumbers don't get plumber's block". ie, time to stop wingeing and get on with it

This is the journal for aleathiel's Nanowrimo attempt (November 2006).

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