Ugh.

[goteam]

I can't stand to read what I wrote for last year's National Novel-Writing Month, but it's been so long that I don't remember it well enough to outline what still needs to be written! Bleaaaugh!

Part of me (ok, a large part) wants to just give up and throw it all out, but I know that's a bad idea because I never finish anything. Somehow I have to

Comments

[kuddliphish]

First of all I must say your novel is NOT shitty. Yes, it is a rough draft, but it also presents some interesting characters, in an interesting world with an actual plot. But I will stop there because I know how I feel about some of my works that other people like

[maerdi]

Hear, hear!

[goteam]

Thank you for all the support, Janelle. I think my disgust mostly stems from having spent so very much time and effort on those 50,000 words last year, only to have it not be very good, and also from being frustrated at myself for not having the determination to finish my story. The combination is a double whammy of doom. Also (I think I've complained about this before) I think it's time for me to change viewpoint characters in a big way --- originally I started writing out in first person from the lead's point of view, and then switched to third person limited when I found I wasn't identifying with her as much as I'd expected to, and now I find myself wanting to do something freaky like first person omniscient narrator who might not even be a character in the story. Danger! But any which way, to get back to work on it I have to figure out where I left off/what I need to write, and that's really hard to do when I get frustrated/disgusted with myself after less than 15 minutes of browsing around in it. One possibility is to dig up

Here I go again

[kuddliphish]

now I find myself wanting to do something freaky like first person omniscient narrator who might not even be a character in the story.

Talk to me about the omniscient first person thing. Are you thinking of having the first person be a loose framing story, kind of like a report on this slice of the history of the witchworld? Or are you thinking of having it be more personal, kind of a "usual suspects" style the narrator was present for the events but primarily as an observer? Either one would work in the context of the plot and setting, but they would have very different feels.

In The Phoenix Guards Steven Brust uses the historic reporter style of first person omniscient to really good effect, mostly by having the narrator be very amusing when he is "visible" but also being distant enough that he can be "invisible" during gripping scenes. The point of view of historian is also fun because it is slanted yet pretends to know-all see-all. Having the narrator be the highly objective voice from the intro could be interesting,

[linley]

I consider the writing done for NaNoWriMo to essentially be one big freewrite--you turn off the critic and just let the words flow. What you end up with is a great big, really, really, rough draft. I only made it about halfway through the last NaNoWriMo I participated in, but when I went back to the story several months later I felt exactly the same way--the draft had major problems. I had refused to let myself read more than the last couple paragraphs of my previous day's work so that I couldn't get sucked into revising instead of writing fresh material. As a result, I had strange plot gaps, characters who changed names, etc. etc. But that wasn't the worst. The opening reminded me way too much of Romeo and Juliet, and the characters needed so much more development, and on and on and on. But I had a really interesting central character who was well on her way to finding herself, and some decent material in bits here and there. And so I started to tinker with that