While the New Year gives us a measurable marker for change and the passing of time, it doesn’t fundamentally mean anything. The calendar may have changed, but we have not. I’ve overloaded myself before with grandiose plans and meticulous lists that end up crushing me and coming to naught. That’s pretty depressing and I really don’t need any more of that right now. With the pandemic and unsettled political climate still raging, I can’t expect the chronic, low-level stress and anxiety to go away with the turn of a page.
National Novel Writing Month is over for another year. I was pretty excited to start, but had to drag myself, bruised and battered, to the finish line. Between the growing gloom of winter, getting sick every single weekend, and the increasingly devastating hormonal flux that comes the week before monthlies, I got 10,000 words behind and never properly made up for that. It’s technically complete, but I don’t feel like I have much of a novel.
This could be a complete misconception on my part. I haven’t actually gone back yet to look over what I wrote. There are a few scenes I remember which are pretty good, but I had to throw in a lot of notes and word-vomit to make it to 50,000 words. Even though I reached the NaNoWriMo word count goal, I’m not sure if I earned it. I certainly don’t feel like I did.
Spells in Sepia has potential, but right now I don’t think I have a real plot. It’s just a random assortment of disjointed scenes and concepts. Not a lot actually happening, just a bunch of internal monologuing from my main character. I don’t feel like I have the world-building under control because I haven’t done enough research into the places where the story is set. I’m just tossing out nonsense, which means I’ll have to go back and make sense of it all, and that prospect is utterly daunting right now. The thought of having to continue writing, then go back and kill all my darlings, then repeat the whole thing over and over and over again makes me want to curl up in a tiny ball and start whimpering. The thought of then having to query and look for agents makes me want to crawl into the deepest, darkest cave I can find and start screaming.
Right now, writing isn’t very fun. And I really want it to be fun again. But I also want to, you know, finish stuff. Which I can’t do unless I keep going through this process of rolling the rock of Sisyphus up an endless hill.
So… yeah. Sorry this isn’t the uplifting peon of victory you may have been waiting for. I was hoping for one too. At the moment I’m just exhausted, discouraged, and so behind on so many things.
But at least I can binge-watch my Blu-ray of Good Omens now.
There’s a reason I’m not usually a pantser. Mostly it’s because I write myself into a corner. But it’s also because I hate feeling like I’m being inaccurate, even when it’s just the first draft. Or I just hate feeling like I’m floundering about, retreading old tropes, taking the easy way out.
Spells in Sepia (SiS) is tackling a lot of new ground for me, and it might be more than I can handle. I’m trying to just let go and write, but at the same time, I feel like I’m missing a lot of narrative opportunities, directions, and ideas because I don’t know enough about what I’m writing.
Unlike most of my other projects, this is an urban fantasy, so it’s supposed to take place in the real world. Our real world. For the most part, anyway. But there are a few hitches: Time, Place, and Character Career.
The Cat's Cradle : On Hiatus! 