I’m a little bit pregnant, and unfortunately for nanowrimo, it’s the stage of pregnancy where I’m at my most exhausted and my most unmotivated. To say nothing of the 24/7 nausea that prevents me from doing much of anything except willing it to go away. I tried fitting writing in with everything else that was happening. I tried sacrificing what i could in favor of writing, because that’s what nanowrimo is about.

It just wasn’t working, and instead of being something that i was looking forward to, nanowrimo was becoming something that was adding another level of stress to my life when i really didn’t need it. It’s not likely I’ll get out of this phase until sometime in december, so “waiting for it to get easier” wasn’t an option, either.

I think it would have been different if i’d been more invested in my story. I can’t pretend that’s not also a factor in quitting. I’m just not into it. All stories come from outside inspiration, but there’s something that gets “hooked” internally to make it work. This novel has been lacking that, so far. It just feels like I’m assembling a puzzle into something that looks like a novel but isn’t right. In order to make the novel work, I have to invest much more into it, and like i said, I don’t really have the time right now. Maybe in my second trimester, when things are supposed to get easier before they get umpossible again, I’ll host a personal nanowrimo.

This doesn’t mean you get to quit. Far from it. Unless you’re also hiding a life-altering medical condition, you keep plugging away. I’m still going to be a cheerleader, so look for a post on murmur.com in the next couple of days about how to get past the ides of November.

10,398 words and out.

Except me.

For some reason, I feel like I’m not going to get through it this year. For the past few days, I’ve been blaming my story. It feels weak, and I’m worried it’s not going to be enough to propel me though the month or that once I cross over to the not-real world, that I’ll be completely stuck without motivation or direction. I’m worried that it’s going to feel cliched or that it’ll have some sort of “direct to disney family movie night” feel to it. I don’t know. It’s not like I’m expecting it to be the next Neverending Story, really.

Here’s the gist of the idea: A 12-year-old city-dwelling girl’s mother is remarrying and they’ll be moving out to the suburbs. She doesn’t want to go. She wants her father (who is either a jet-setter or works for doctors without borders) to come back and taker her with him, but he cannot. While packing (i think), she discovers a letter from her paternal grandmother (or a collection of letters from her father?) that her mother has kept from her. It also contains a charm of some sort. Furious that her mother has kept this from her, she runs (with her adorable great dane that her father gave her 4 years earlier) to her favorite spot in the park to mull things over. While mulling, a strange raccoon-like creature snatches the charm and runs off with it. She follows, only to go “through the rabbit hole” of sorts and into a crazy fantasy world where the first thing she notices is that her faithful companion is now a talking horse. Adventure quickly follows (the specifics and the initial motivation are still a mystery to me – as is the look and feel of the world). By the end of the tale she learns that she’s from this world (and probably royalty) but that she must return to the “normal” world and go about her business at least for the bulk of every year. Until the next book anyway. The mother may or may not meet up with her at some point. There will likely be a semi-shady character who ends up being her uncle (the bald guy from those dreams), but beyond that, most of the fantasy world is undefined. It’s clearly “real”, though. Not like Oz or Fantasia, where it’s possible the kid is just batshit. I think I want her to end up rescuing her father in some fashion, but that seems a bit too “Golden Compass” for me.

….You know what? I think I feel better. I don’t think it’s the story anymore, or at least, after writing it out, the story sounds kind of interesting. Maybe I’m just afraid of writing a “young adult” novel because that means i can’t get all sexy and curse-y and violent…y. I should probably see what my friend the internet has to say about writing novels for a teen audience to set my mind at ease and go flesh out that outline and such.

Like last year, I’ll try to post a few times a week to let you know how I’m doing. No staying up past midnight to get a jump start on this year. I’m still recovering from a rather brutal cold and my stamina just isn’t up to speed yet.