NaNoWriMo Fail....Maybe

Here it is, the 26th of November and I'm nearing the end of my third National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo).  I went into this month excited and all ready to re-write my 2010 NaNo novel.  I was pumped.  I wanted to get through NaNo with a fresh draft, maybe edit it one more time soon after, and then send it out to beta readers.  Then, my goal was to edit and edit and edit some more during the next year, and to send it out to agents by the end of 2012.  It was a lovely, wonderful, sweet plan.


Then it all went to hell.


There were HUGE plot holes in my story.  Things that I couldn't get past.  Things that were integral to my plot - things that were integral to this story becoming two books, maybe even three.  Things that I MAYBE could have figured out as I wrote, but everything else that I wrote relied on me figuring those things out.  Also, there was absolutely no action in my story.  Well, one car wreck scene, but that was it.  The rest was people explaining things to others.  A lot of telling, instead of showing.  Yes, these are things that can be fixed in future edits, but it just wasn't working.  I was bored of my story (although I still like much of the idea), and I felt like nothing was happening.  Nothing was moving forward.


So I changed it.  I made it much more YA.  I made it more supernatural.  Then I decided to read a couple of published novels that were similar to mine.  I know, I know, people say not do to this.  We should steer clear of novels that might resemble what we are currently writing.  But I wanted to read them to make sure that my novel wasn't too much like them.  So with one, I was okay.  My story was different enough that I wasn't worried.  But then I read the other one, and it was like, yeesh.  That's almost exactly what I'm writing.


So I changed it again.  Now, mind you, I haven't been deleting anything, so my NaNo word count still includes what I wrote for the first two stories.  But with this one, I only wrote about 1,000 words and got bored.  Again.


I haven't written a single word on my NaNo novel (novels?) since the 17th.  I'm currently sitting at 14,540 words.  Which is less than I did my first year, where I got around 15,000 words.  Last year I won.  This year, I have to write over 7,000 words a day to reach the 50,000-word goal.  I'm thinking this isn't going to happen.  


For the past few days I've been really discouraged about my writing.  I pretty much decided that this story, this idea that I've been working on and changing and brainstorming about for the past year needs to be set aside.  Maybe someday I'll figure out what to do with it.  But for now, I figured I'd just start a whole new story, keeping my current word count, of course.  But I was at a loss as to what to write.  I looked on the NaNo forums, where they have this great Adoption Society, where you can "adopt" plots or characters or whatever.  But nothing struck my fancy.  I was out of inspiration.  So I got more discouraged.


But today, I read some posts by Maureen Johnson (she's the Agony Aunt this year of NaNo - kind of like a Dear Abby columnist) where she talks about just jumping into your novel, and where she helps writers who have lost that fun relationship with writing.  Maureen Johnson has helped me all throughout this month.  She seems to know exactly what questions to answer at the right time.  I think she might be psychic.  


I also hopped on my Twitter account (I don't do that very often - I only was compelled to go there today because I got an email that someone new was following me) and browsed some tweets by literary agent Holly Root.  She had one on there about an author she represents who wrote a post about her experience finding an agent.  


It's weird.  Things like this open my eyes and light a fire under me and make me wonder why I ever questioned my writing.  I've been writing ever since I can remember.  Before I could physically write myself, I would tell my mom little stories and she would type them up for me.  I have always been a writer.  And I have always wanted to someday be published.  


So what if that original NaNo idea never becomes anything publishable?  I love to write, and stories are always coming to me.  I just need to remember that I don't have to have the next huge hit idea, and that I don't have to even have to have an outline before I start writing.  Actually, it's better, for me, if I don't do too much planning, because otherwise I think that I have to have everything perfectly planned out before I can even begin.  This does not work.  I just need a little spark of an idea.  A character trait, a world, an image - something that will get me started.  And then I just need to let it go from there.


So I may not finish NaNo this year.  I may not get to put a shiny Winner badge on my next blog post.  But right now, after I finish this post, I'm going to go back to that Adoption Society forum and find something - some little glimmer, some quirk or scene or line or name or setting - SOMETHING to get the ball rolling.  I'm in the writing mood today.  And we'll see how far I can get when I have no plan, no plot, and no direction.  This actually will probably be fun.