Surrendering, Yet Still Succumbing

photo by ryantow

          After writing for less than a week, I am waving in the air the pages I've written so far as part of the NaNoWriMo project; I'm surrendering.

            The reason?  Is it because the pace is too much?  A bit, but not really.  The main obstacle:  my story is crapola.

            On November 1, in preparation to beginning writing, I squinted over a list of 1000 plot ideas.  (The type was extremely tiny.) I found an idea that seemed clever do-able at the time, but has fizzled out quickly.  The character--since I did not really have one in mind before beginning--has become too much like me, and then I threw snippets of other people's personalities on top of the character.  It is now a "hot mess."

            The plot is going nowhere.  It has ended up being endless descriptions and internal conversations and nothing interesting or exciting is happening.  If the character and story does not matter to me, does it have a chance of engaging someone else?  I think not...

             So I am surrendering.  I certainly am not assuming that if I had stuck with it, I could have kept up with the pace.  And don't even think of writing, "But it was probably not as bad as you thought...I'll bet it was pretty good...You're too hard on yourself," and so on.  If it smells like poop and looks like poop and reads like poop, it is indeed poop.

             However I am also succumbing.  Even though it was just a matter of days, I enjoyed the daily writing expectation.  It was fun to sit down and fulfill some sort of requirement. So I am succumbing to the muse that was sitting next to me this week, urging me to write. 

          I figured, if I can write over 1,000 words a day about something that does not matter to me, perhaps I can write at least half that amount on things that do matter to me.  There is a contest that I'd like to enter, a piece for one of the Chicken Soup for the Soul anthologies I'd like to write, and an idea for a children's book was brought up from the dead yesterday...

           So, to all NaNo writers who keep slugging away, keep it up.  I bow down to you...