Reading other people's accounts of going through NaNoWriMo, I can see that everybody's trip is different ... but there are still a number of milestones or emotional experiences that different writers share. I don't mean there is a single set of stages in novel-writing progression, just some similarities in the problems we face and the ways we react.
I had expected to share others' frustrations: days where nothing fits together right or the words won't come to you, when you realize that one of your most beloved characters needs to be scrapped or reworked, when a major plot arc falls apart, general feelings of doubt and inferiority and incapability.
But I didn't expect this. I didn't foresee at all the part where all the requisite pieces click into place with a satisfying snap. Nor the part where I would feel a tranquil acceptance regarding the imperfect edges of my work, the puzzles that I don't know how to solve yet or may have to release back into the wild, an embracing of the fact that no matter how I might contort or guard myself it is unavoidable that I will in some fashion bleed into these pages and people who read them will see parts of me.
When I last updated, I said that I'd chosen to set aside what I'd learned about how to write, and that I was also putting aside pretty much the entirety of what I'd written so far in order to begin again. So far I have not even for a moment regretted that. It felt like removing the cork from a bottle--everything started flowing again.
I don't know all of where this story is going. I don't know if it will interest anybody else. I don't know if it will be "good" (whatever that is). I don't know how much it will hurt. I don't even know if I can make it make sense, or if it will be beautiful to me in the end.
But, jeez, I'm here. I'm here, I'm here.
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| maybe next week i will be here instead--who knows? |
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