Subterranean Home Stretch Blues

Looks like i'll get to 40K tommorrow. I certainly need it. Looking back, I don't remember previous nano's being this difficult. No, not even last year, when I was working full time (and believe me, November is the worst month for teaching in New Zealand), adjusting to the joys of parenthood, and wrestling a plot that was sprouting in many different directions (eventually, it turned into two seperate stories).

Okay, so 40K doesn't look bad - I'm sure some of you would sell limbs or non-essential organs for a few of those words. But it has been a struggle to get here. I'm exhausted, not too happy with my story and fustrated. I can sense the story lurking in the background, but I can't quite see it clearly enough to get it down on paper. I feel like I'm putting down a pretty poor substitute for the REALLY GOOD STORY that I should be writing.

I'm guessing most of you feel the same. Writing under pressure is like this. You can't spend time finding the right words or exploring all the poetical and metaphysical possibilities of a scene, or captuing a character's motivations in a few nuanced sentences. What should have been great scenes seem flat. Characters seem to be as artificial as puppets.

I can't offer any advice that will dispell this feeling of inadequacy, the suspicion that you're somehow spoiling your story and it would be better if someone who actually knew what they were doing was writing it.

I can only offer my usual advice: keep writing. It will get better. It might just be delight as you stagger across the 50K mark, or just numb relief. Or perhaps as you move towards the climax, things will pick up as the narrative gathers momentumn. Things can fall into place all of a sudden and stuff can just sudednly make sense. You get a buzz going when things like that happen. When it happens in the 30s or early 40s, it can give you a big enough kick to send you hurtling towards the finish line with the sort of enthusiam you NEVER thought you'd again feel for writing.

The other positive thing I can say is that things aren't ever as bad as you remember. One thing I've really enjoyed this year is looking back over previous nano's to find exemplars for the diversions I've shared. Reading some of those efforts has been really exciting - I've been amazed at how good they are. I'm convinced they are at least 500 time sbetter than what I'm writing now. I'm also sure in a couple of year time, I'll look back on 2007 as the very best year I ever had, at least 500 times better than whatever I'm writing in this putative future ... And remember, these were all projects I junked, and didn't think were worth carrying on with. At least one of them has now been moved into the 'Worth revisiting' folder (The story surrounding the Judy's Audition extract).

So don't let the voices in your head (and I KNOW there are voices in your head. Don't worry about it. Only mad people don't hear the voices by this stage) dissaude you from carrying on. Remember - no-one else can write this story. You might not be writing it as well as you'd like, but if it doesn't get written now, by you, it never will be written. And once it's written, however badly, it can be made better. And once you've got through nano, and had time to come back to your senses, you'll realise it isn't half as bad as it looks just now.