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November 09, 2006

YESSSSSSSSS!

Thanks to a fellow NaNo-er with whom I've been exchanging emails, I made an important change to my novel today. I hated writing it, it was just too, too dreary and I was having more and more trouble with motivation. Self-motivation, that is, the kind that gets your butt to the keyboard and your brain away from the internet and your being focused on the task of writing.

In my email to her, I mentioned that I have a friend I really envy. Uli is in the playwriting program with my husband, and I love her stuff. She tosses these elements of magic and the miraculous into her work and they take the pieces to a higher level. A gorgeous and theatrical level. Her plays are full of the unexpected transforming life into beauty.

I've never been able to do that. My gift is for detailed and complete worlds and situations, realistic characters. I can take a concept and run with it and be completely consistent, staying within the rules of that world from day one, though the world itself has to be unusual or fantastical. I write stories about normal people in unusual situations in different worlds. I can't just interject magic into the everyday.

But the thing is, (I wrote) what my characters need more than anything right now is an elephant in a tutu to pirouette through and serve them margaritas.

And then I thought, fuck it. It's NaNoWriMo. People do all sorts of things to their novels just to get them written in November, and I refuse to give up just because I don't like the story so far. It may be the worst thing I've ever written, but nobody has to read it but me. And if I don't like it, I can change it. So I pledged myself today to adding magical elements to the stuff I'd already written. That would be my tactic for reaching my wordcount for today.

I put it off for a while. Hemmed and hawed and surfed and experimented with ATC's. But the moment finally came and I sat down to do some work.

And magic happened.

Not only did magical elements begin suggesting themselves from word one, they were perfect. Simple, subtle, consistent. The rapes became more brutal, but the joys and daring and truths were equally more intense and vital and saturated with... with...magic.

Two hours later and slightly more than halfway through the stuff I'd already written, I had 1945 new words. I'm now well past the 1667 quota for the day. I'm invigorated, I'm free, and most of all, I'm hopeful.

This is a story I'm going to enjoy writing. It may even be a story I'll someday enjoy reading. I still don't think I'll ever share it with anybody, though.

Posted by sally at November 9, 2006 10:51 PM

Comments

Oohh! Good luck! that's awesome that you feel better about it now. You go, girl!

Posted by: Mrs. Flinger at November 11, 2006 12:13 PM

Thanks! It's so much easier to write when it's interesting.

Posted by: Sallyacious at November 11, 2006 02:18 PM

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