Let’s begin. Again.
I had gotten really good at posting here on a regular basis. Then NaNoWriMo happened and everything went to hell. If it wasn’t something that *had* to be done, it didn’t get taken care of – blog posts, posts on social media, laundry, vacuuming, you name it – and that lasted longer than just one month.
So, we’ll briefly start back at November.
I successfully completed NaNo last year. It was exhilarating because I’d never done it before. Will I do it again? That remains to be seen. I certainly enjoy the routine and now that I know I can write that much in a single month with small kids and a busy home life, I won’t say I will never compete to win it again. I will probably work harder leading up to the beginning of NaNo, though, so I don’t have the same experience after the fact as I did last year.
Now, we’ll jump to March.
As I told my reader group, I’ve never killed a manuscript before now.
I’ve actually stopped working on the manuscript I won with.
After I finished Letters from Emily I went right into Greg and Caryn’s book (tentatively titled I’ll Wait For You). It was great. I was on a roll and by the time I got to NaNoWriMo I already had almost 10,000 words done. Every single day I wrote and, though I love the characters, the story wasn’t what I wanted. I won with a day to spare, but I was forcing the words on the page because the goal was 50k and I was within spitting distance.
I tend to go back and edit while I work. If I’m stuck I go back and read from the beginning or the beginning of the chapter I’m in. I didn’t do that during November. I think that’s where things started to go wrong.
December came and the ability to add to the story dissipated. Between December 2 and February 17, I added less than 1,000 words. I hardly opened the file. When I did open it, I wanted to delete it. Not just a few lines. The entire document … 62,000+ words. That’s the length of a lot of complete novels and I couldn’t shake the feeling that this thing I had written was just total trash and that’s where it deserves to be.
The problem is, I had put so much pressure on myself to just get the words down the story got away from me until it had morphed into something … else. It wasn’t until earlier this month that I realized writing Caryn and Greg’s book sent me spiraling down the rabbit hole of depression.
I had a breakthrough a few weeks ago, though. It resulted in me making the decision to put my current manuscript on ice. Caryn and Greg deserve better from me, and so do my readers.
Instead of Caryn and Greg, I’ve started plotting Fisher’s book. You’ll remember him from Tommy’s book as Jacelyn’s brother. Caryn and Greg will play a role in this story, so they aren’t going far. Instead of using Caryn and Greg to get me to Fisher’s story, theirs is all background noise for now. It’s better this way.
I’m excited to get to know Fisher more and I hope you are, too.
M.L. Pennock 