So basically, NaNoWriMo ended and I was feeling all refreshed and ready to go back to battle it out with my WIP. Then I sat down to start writing.
*crickets*
So either I waited too long or didn’t wait long enough. I’m really struggling to put words onto the page. The loudest complaint from my inner critic is how whiny my MC feels… and my constant, nail-biting worry that she’s too passive. It’s paralyzing.
Then, on the mechanics side, I’m having weird trouble getting back into first person. After spending all that time grumbling about how hard third person is.
*facepalm*
So I’m procrastinating actually writing anything by writing this blog post. Because how is anything I write going to be fun and interesting if I feel bored and distanced from what I’m writing?
(Plus, I’m way behind in writing blog posts. Yikes.)
It doesn’t help that at this moment my car is sitting on the side of the road, unable to move due to the nice ice slick that built up on the hill leading to my house. It’s about a half mile walk to my house, so I’m fine. But my car is special to me. And I can just see it getting smashed by a driver that loses control of the car.
And it’s totally not my fault I got stuck, because I was doing just fine until the car in front of me stopped, and then I had to stop. Once I’d stopped there was no getting going again.
Sigh.
I’m way off topic.
Anyway.
Another weird block to being able to write is the anxious waiting for edits of the first book from my editor. (That’s still so weird to say). I can tell there’s going to be some changes, and I feel like if I don’t know what those changes are yet, I shouldn’t be writing on the later books. If I don’t have a firm set first book, the vision for the others are nebulous. Or there’s the fact I might have to end up re-writing it all if something ends up being changed.
Or, perhaps, is this just another excuse not to write. At the bottom of it all I need to be writing, no matter what my stinkin’ brain says. Good habits and being a real writer and all that jazz.
So. It’s a snow day today in the weird-weathered NW today, and it’s nearly impossible to get anywhere. It’s the perfect day to write — no commitments, nice crackling fire, snow gleaming through the windows — and I am going to make it happen.
I may just need to start writing crap until the good stuff starts flowing; that’s certainly a pattern NaNoWriMo has proven to be fairly useful.
Anybody else struggling to jive with their characters on this wintery day?
It may help you to read my post, “Mystery Solved! Riddle of Writing Well in the First Person Revealed!” (http://wp.me/p30cCH-1DS). And then take some time off from writing to read “Treasure Island.”
What I discovered is that the best first-person POV writing is really a variant of a third-person limited POV story. Essentially, this means that a third-person narrator may be given a name (but it’s not necessary: see DuMaurier’s “Rebecca”), and reported events and limited insights are personalized with the addition of first-person pronouns and possessives. The rest of the story’s basic structure is the same as that of a limited third-person narrative. The focus is on telling the story, not on writing about its narrator.