NaNoWriMo is a week old now, and it’s already been a rollercoaster ride.
On November 1st, I began writing a story that Sam and I concocted a few weeks ago, when we had this magical intersection of dovetailing ideas. Truth be told, it was almost creepy, how these ideas of ours meshed so well. Ideas that we’d had within days of each other, without any previous conversations on topic. Great minds…? At any rate, it’s always MY instinct just to start writing, and so it was with full enthusiasm that I began the story earlier this week.
‘Full steam ahead’ dwindled rather rapidly. I pushed through about 3500 words, and every paragraph was like pulling teeth. I haven’t written something that dreadful in a very long time (I’m glad to say!) and it was agony to think about moving forward. My desire to write this story vanished…because another story was lurking in the recesses of my mind, possessing my thoughts and my will to write.
A non-writer would look at this and perhaps shake their head, and consider me melodramatic and my metaphors over-the-top. But my fellow writers, I imagine you can commiserate here.
Yesterday, I officially gave up on the other story. Not forever–it’s a tale with potential, and perhaps we will return to it one day. But I went to Sam and spilled the news.
I must write the sequel to Traitor’s Gate.
After all our revisions and efforts on the aforementioned, my burnout was high. I declared that I was done with this story and this world for awhile, that I needed a break. I looked forward to NaNo as a chance to get away from the Seventh Empire and explore a new world. Apparently I only needed a few days! The sequel has arrested my thoughts, and my enthusiasm has returned 110%. Sam and I spent most of yesterday afternoon brainstorming and plotting, and I have spent several hours today writing.
I would hazard to say that writers do not create stories. We craft them, we manipulate them, we express them. But stories to me seem to be an entity of their own, a force that takes hold of writers and refuses to let go. We must write them. We have no other option.
Have you ever felt that possession?