NaNoWriMo Pep Talk - Hitting the Wall

[jimhines]

One of the Lansing municipal liaisons for NaNoWriMo asked if I’d write up a pep talk for week two. I decided to talk about that part in my process where the novelty and shininess has worn off, and I realize my outline is broken, and suddenly it feels like the story is crumbling in my hands, and what was I even thinking???

It happens with pretty

Comments

[aulus_poliutos]

I don't outline, but at times I suspect some illiterate troll swapped my shiny chapters with troll poo full of bad metaphors, unnecessary adverbs, clumsy syntax, and jarring POV shifts. At those times I wonder why I bother writing at all, and in a language not my own to boot. It helps to know that most writers go through stages like that; even GRR Martin said in an interview that on bad days he looks at his manuscript and asks himself 'who wrote that crap?'

[deborahblakehps]

The novel I'm currently working on fought back worse than any I'd ever done before. The first 32-34K words had to be rewritten twice. (I wrote them wrong the first two times, alas.) I think it is finally coming together, although since I was off at World Fantasy con for 4 days, now I have to try and get back in the zone...

[andrewducker]

I think my wife could have done with this 1/3 of the way through her PhD...

[coeli]

Thank you. I needed to hear this today. I have a script in process that has hit a snag earlier in the process than is usual for me and I was feeling rather low about it.