That’s kind of what it felt like. I won because I put down the 50K words, but I’m not satisfied with the story. It will probably be a while before I come back to it because honestly, the whole thing ticks me off. I want to print it out so I can hold it in my hands and yell at it.
Don’t even try to tell me you’ve never felt like that.
The whole business of writing is weird, isn’t it? NaNoWriMo is a great act of discipline, but I think we can all agree it’s about quantity, not quality. Writing 50K in a decentrough draft is more impressive, though. Unfortunately, the conditions in my brain and in my life weren’t lining up this time so it was a lot more of a chore than usual.
All of writing is like that. There are times when things work. There are times when they don’t. There are times you force yourself to write and in the end, have to delete your forced words as unreadable. There are times when those words are just as good as the rest of the novel, too.
There are a million factors that create a book. Not all of them are in the writer’s control. The true task is never stopping the flow of words.
Man, I’m deep.
The first two years I did NaNoWriMo, I finished with a rough draft that I thought was really quite decent. That is not the experience I'm having this year. I'm nowhere near satisfied with this year's story. I'm thinking about shredding it all when I'm done. Well, maybe I'll keep the beginning and the end. But the rest of it is toast.
ReplyDeleteCongratulations on having reached 50k...
I always feel like that. If it weren't for the ability to revise, I'd be a crap writer.
ReplyDeleteYou are deep. But I like deep. I rarely get the opportunity to experience rich full thoughts and the end of November seems perfect for this kind of reflectiveness.
ReplyDeleteI haven't tried the NaNo thing... somehow the quantity over quality thing would start to get to me after awhile.
ReplyDeleteI wonder how many others are feeling the wish to shred the final product? Or at least give it a good yelling at?
Give the story some space. You might find that you don't hate it as much later as you do right now.
ReplyDeleteCongrats on finishing. That's huge. Celebrate that for a while.
I can no longer write with that intensity (as far as words per month) and produce something I'm remotely happy with anymore.
ReplyDeleteYou've done great. Now you can really get stuck in.
ReplyDeleteI no longer worry about my word count when it comes to NaNo. I just see it as a month where I can truly dedicate a set amount of time each day to writing. That way I don't spend a month hammering out 50,000 words only to spend the next three months deleting and re-writing them.
ReplyDeleteOh and yes. . . I have actually screamed at my manuscripts before :)