Time is either my best friend or my worst enemy. It’s now 10:48 AM and I’m on my second cup of coffee, yet I’ve been up since oh, I’m not even sure now, but the minutes have turned into hours and the hours have turned into what feels like days. Camp NaNo is almost over, and I’ve learned a great deal about myself this time as a writer. I decided to make this session work for me instead of speeding through words to get my word count. I outlined. I threw that one out and started all over. Only to find that I as I wrote I was really just writing back story, not the story itself. Back to the drawing board. What did I really have? Where did I want to go? What were my characters really doing? Concept. Theme. Character. Ideas. Plots. Plot bunnies. Structure. Inciting incidents and hooks, first plot points and pinchs, action and reaction, scenes and sequels.
There I was tumbling, falling into the hole like Alice, only where was I? I sure as hell wasn’t in Wonderland. No, I’d fallen into a black hole of structure that was bogging me down so much that I lost my creativity. Where had it gone? Was this what plotting/outlining felt like to a pantser? I couldn’t do it. I just couldn’t breath, I was suffocating in all that structure. I took a deep breath and watched the first season of the Vampire Diaries. WOW! Now those are some vampires worth drooling over, I’d take Stephan or Damon over Edward any day. Mind candy was exactly what I needed. But I still needed to figure a few things out for the concept of my novel. Research. I could do some research.
Since I’m writing a book about a natural born witch/psychic I might as well watch some witchy psychicy movies. Read a witchy/psychicy book or three. So off I went in search of movies with a psychic theme, a witch theme, or the supernatural in general. Vampire Diaries has witches, and that lead me to the Originals. The Original Witches. The Original Vampires. WOW! What a novel idea!!!
Oh wait. What about male witches? What about psychics? What about… Oh Wait A Minute! I have the Covenant on DVD. I watched it. I watched yet another season of the Vampire Diaries. I watched the pilot episode of the Originals. I watched Supernatural. I read three chapters of Harry Potter. I ordered the sensor for the Wii that my daughter gave us so we can watch Netflix on our big TV in the living room instead of on the computer (my desktop monitor is only 20″, not exactly great to watch a movie on when you’re on the couch instead of sitting at the desk. I read another chapter of Harry Potter. I read The Trouble with Fate by Leigh Evans (good book). I also read more of Larry Brooks StoryEnginerring. I went back to watching the Vampire Diaries. (NO, of course I’m not hooked. I’m only at the end of season 2 in all of one week).
And I’m back to my novel! Coffee in hand. The good kind, at least to me. I managed to get myself a bag of Dunkin’ Donuts coffee, which my husband does not like, and made a pot after he left for work. So here I am at my desktop, ready to write…. Only trouble is my mind really just isn’t on it… I need to finish that cup of coffee first.
I guess you could say I’m in a writing funk. That’s what happens when time isn’t on your side, or maybe that’s what happens when you procrastinate, or maybe that’s what happens when you spent so much time writing you managed to burn yourself out and need time to recuperate…I don’t know what it is exactly, but my mind has been wondering the past week. I guess I just needed a break. . I still manged to make my word count for the past week though. That’s something.
BurgessTaylor 
xabeldichronicles
April 24, 2014 at 10:58 pm
I can sympathize. I opted out of Camp NaNo because I wasn’t sure my head would be in it (it wasn’t), and my drive was sputtering like a faulty engine. When it comes to writer’s funk/block, immersion is usually the best way to go. I think you covered that nicely.
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Burgess Taylor
April 25, 2014 at 2:31 am
When I was planning for Camp NaNo I was feeling it. I was there. In the zone. Something happened the first day of NaNo. All that planning, plotting, outlining had given me a sound structure for a really good novel, but it wasn’t THE NOVEL that was inside of me. I tried though. Then I put that one on hold because the more I wrote the more I realized I was actually writing backstory for the real novel inside of me. I put the novel I’d planned so thoroughly off to the side and decided to go with what my gut was telling me. However, I’d gotten so burned out from trying to hard to write the novel I’d planned that I needed a break. I needed some “me time.” I now know that I am a plotster. I’m the hybrid of a panters and a plotter. I can’t plot out an entire novel, it drives me mad with all the details and takes away the creative muse–I get lost in those details and feel as if I’m suffocating. Yet I cannot pants my way through a novel either, then I get lost and I’m struggling to find the bread crumbs that will lead me back home. I combined all of what I wrote, and reduced my goal for word count for Camp NaNo and in true Camp fashion will write until the very last day, but I’m no longer writing for word count, I’m writing because the story is there inside me. And that’s really what NaNo is really about for me.
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xabeldichronicles
April 25, 2014 at 2:01 pm
I agree. I drown in my own details sometimes. I remember writing without focusing on the small things (am I explaining the science right? What if someone asks me how the ship goes into light speed? Etc etc) and I found it much more enjoyable. I tend to save that sort of detail for editing/revisions.
I also know the suffering of doing all the prep work for a novel, only to realize it’s not what I want to write, or the story falls apart on me. I have had characters rebel too. That is especially frustrating.
My current MS is my NaNo 2013 project, and wow talk about scattered scenes. It’s grown to be over 90K words, most of which is the result of word count writing. Editing this puppy will be fun.
Oh, have you watched American Horror Story? It might help your creativity too. 🙂
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Hayley Knighten
April 25, 2014 at 5:14 pm
Hey Burgess, I tagged you in a writer blog hop. I’d love to hear your answers and learn more about you as a writer. Here is a link to my post http://booksaredelicious.com/2014/04/25/my-writing-process-blog-hop/
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