I am currently working on 'something.' It has been a struggle to get started, but I've made some progress recently. I broke 10,000 words the other night, which made me very pleased. There are some dicey plot situations ahead, but I'm taking it slowly - ah, the joys of not writing 1667 or 2000 words a night! - and hopefully won't get myself into too much of a mess.
Th genesis of this story is interesting. It is drawing on at least three different quasi-abandoned projects. One was a longish piece about someone looking for his missing brother. I started pretty well with that, with some interesting ideas floating about, but after ther strip club scene (I always have to have a strip club scene) I got lost and ended up with my characters wandering about the Manawatu countryside in search of a plot. Then I started re-writing it, but this time with a woman looking for her missing sister. This didn't strike me as weird or pointless at the time, and I managed a coupleof nights work before I realsied it was doomed - DOOMED I TELL YOU - because I still hadn't thought to plan anything. Hell, all these people getting killed off, and no-one having any idea who or why or how it was done. Least of all me. So that was abandoned, and I went into a bit of a funk.
Nanowrimo pulled me out of the trough, but only to dumpt me back into a deeper one. I really wanted to suceed at Nano in 2008, after burning out in Socnoc earleir in the year. I managed 50,000 words in Novmeber, but the consequences were pretty devastating - I hated what I was writing, hated writing mysteries and hated myself for making such a bloody mess of it. So at the end of Novmber I downed tools and sulked even more fervently for a couple of months.
Immedaitely prior to Nano, I'd tried writing a disconnected scene featuring the investigator who had featured in the two incomplete efforts mentioned above. This time I just put her in a strange, slightly scarey (at least, that was the intention) situation and wrote it, to get back intot he habit of writing regularly again for Nano. It wasn't bad, but it didn't fit into anything much. And then it was put aside for Nano, which, as I said, didn't go too well and ended up with me not writing anything until February.
In February, I decided it was time to pull myself together. When that didn;t work, I decided it was time to start writing again, regardless. I had thought of a (fairly) killer opening line and opening scene and decided to see where that took me. After writing it, I relaised that it would make perfect sense to attach one of my previously abandoned efforts from 2008 onto it, as a first chapter. Suddenly, I had characters, and if not a plot, at least some action that required explanation. Hurrah! So I cobbled them together, and carried on, hoping the joins weren't too obvious. Then I thought the pre-Nano exercise, an not inconsiderable 5000 words, could be worked in further along the line. So, suddenly, this had POTENTIAL. ANd I even managed to work in an extract from my botched 2008 Socnoc effort. Only a few hundred words, but it got me out of an awkward situation quite nicely. And it felt good to have salvaged something from that.
(Though if I ever re-visit that story - and it has possibilities, damnit! - I'll have to remember that I've already used that bit.)
So things are moving, things are moving. The last couple of nights have been tricky because I'm tryig to bridge a gap in my plot, betwen Lots Of Stuff Happening and the investigator Making An Important Decision (i.e. deciding, "I've got to find out who did this terrible thing!"). It can't be rushed, but it is fustrating to be -effectively - killing time.
And with that dreadful pun, I will away.
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