I broke 10k for NaNo last night. I am way out ahead of where I was when I did this two years ago. That being said, I am muy disheartened.
When I was trying to describe my displeasure last night, I put it this way:
I sat down to write the The Hobbit, and am, instead, writing the Silmarion Silmarillion (thanks Bria).
Because I don’t have proprietary authorship rights to the world in which the story I had planned to tell takes place, I have to put it in my own world. No problem, says me – until I start writing. Then I realize that unless I make some pale rip-off world, nothing will make sense. So, I bring the story back down to bones, and start at the beginning – where does it take place? From there, I set to building a world, which led to writing a history, and figuring out a divinity somewhere along the way. Now I am 10k+ into a fairy-tale genesis, and I’ve just gotten to the close of the second age! I need another age under my belt, for sure, to set things up.
This is frustrating mostly because it is some of the best hook-writing I’ve done in years. The way my little scribbled notes have become full-blown worlds is really enervating, and the story I will have to re-work what I am writing – I think, and either abandon what I have written thus far, or find ways to work it into the book in snippets. My main story is still mostly unwritten, and I have no way of getting at it yet, until I finish up what I am working towards. Also, this world, as I am writing it, is becoming its own thing. It steals from plots and storied I have used in the past, or planed out and never used, but as they are being blended together, it is becoming a new thing.
Basically, I think I was right when I said that there was no way this story was happening in less than 70k, with 20k of that probably being just padding and back story that I can cut – or not.
Argh.
My point is, I haven’t played with enough Lego lately. I did some of that Saturday night. I wish I had taken a picture of it.
