I DID IT!!!
Waaaaah!!! First year winner!!!
I'm happy, but not as elated as I think I should be. Maybe the enormity of the task hasn't hit me yet (and maybe it will when I go back and get this thing and order and reread it beginning to end) but the story didn't...really...go anywhere.
The way it was described to me the story should have started taking over around the 30k mark but, honestly, I feel like it's just as shapeless and just as pointless as the first day I sat down to write it. I didn't really see anything remarkable develop. The characters are just as flat, the storyline just as aimless and cliche. It's like the creative process never really took off. I was just going through the motions.
Next year I'm going to do an outline FOR SURE before starting; that might be a large part of my problem. When I first started writing fanfiction I trashed hundreds hundreds of pages before I figured out that I was the type of person who needed structure before I started. Otherwise, I'd just wander aimlessly throughout the creative landscape for all eternity and never get anywhere.
Don't get me wrong, the characters changed. They got some extra features, a couple of them switched motives, some interesting side stories happened that might be of interest. But I still feel like this is no different than the shapeless mush I started with. Except now it's in a form that other people can read and say, "Hey, that's shapeless mush."
In any event, it was a first try and an attempt to pitch myself from fanfiction to original work. The two arts are very different! Alot of the things I learned from writing fanfiction I can use. Alot of the things I can't. I figure if I do NaNoWriMo every year for the next ten years that will amount to 10 different ideas. And, who knows, maybe just one of those will spark that interest and say, "Hey! I could be a good story!"
The one big thing I hate about writing original fiction is that now I have this monster that I can't really share with anyone. With the internet the way it is, theft easy to pull off, publishers shy about touching everything that's already been broadcasted to the public, I've now got to sit on this thing and just be satisfied that I wrote it. I can't share it. What's the purpose of creating something if you can't share it with anyone? Geek out with anyone about it?
~sigh~ I'm going to try to story board this thing. Sit down and get an outline together about how it should go and see if I can wrestle this tangled ball of flailing wires into some recognizable shape without getting too many scratches. In any case, YAY ACCOMPLISHMENT! Let's hope this turns into something! I'll definitely be doing this again next year.
I'm happy, but not as elated as I think I should be. Maybe the enormity of the task hasn't hit me yet (and maybe it will when I go back and get this thing and order and reread it beginning to end) but the story didn't...really...go anywhere.
The way it was described to me the story should have started taking over around the 30k mark but, honestly, I feel like it's just as shapeless and just as pointless as the first day I sat down to write it. I didn't really see anything remarkable develop. The characters are just as flat, the storyline just as aimless and cliche. It's like the creative process never really took off. I was just going through the motions.
Next year I'm going to do an outline FOR SURE before starting; that might be a large part of my problem. When I first started writing fanfiction I trashed hundreds hundreds of pages before I figured out that I was the type of person who needed structure before I started. Otherwise, I'd just wander aimlessly throughout the creative landscape for all eternity and never get anywhere.
Don't get me wrong, the characters changed. They got some extra features, a couple of them switched motives, some interesting side stories happened that might be of interest. But I still feel like this is no different than the shapeless mush I started with. Except now it's in a form that other people can read and say, "Hey, that's shapeless mush."
In any event, it was a first try and an attempt to pitch myself from fanfiction to original work. The two arts are very different! Alot of the things I learned from writing fanfiction I can use. Alot of the things I can't. I figure if I do NaNoWriMo every year for the next ten years that will amount to 10 different ideas. And, who knows, maybe just one of those will spark that interest and say, "Hey! I could be a good story!"
The one big thing I hate about writing original fiction is that now I have this monster that I can't really share with anyone. With the internet the way it is, theft easy to pull off, publishers shy about touching everything that's already been broadcasted to the public, I've now got to sit on this thing and just be satisfied that I wrote it. I can't share it. What's the purpose of creating something if you can't share it with anyone? Geek out with anyone about it?
~sigh~ I'm going to try to story board this thing. Sit down and get an outline together about how it should go and see if I can wrestle this tangled ball of flailing wires into some recognizable shape without getting too many scratches. In any case, YAY ACCOMPLISHMENT! Let's hope this turns into something! I'll definitely be doing this again next year.