Most of you probably aren't aware, but last year I participated in NaNoWriMo's young writer program. It was just the young writer program so I wasn't worried about actually writing an entire novel, more-so about picking a word-count goal and actually meeting it. Because it was my first time I went with 15k.
I made my goal and had a lot of fun with it. The story grew around me as a wrought, and it was lovely. I could see the connects pulling together, how one character accidentally affected another, how said situation would cause something else, and things like that. It was breath taking.
But after NaNo I took a break. It was more for my family then for me (missing a family member for four hours a day was a little difficult for them to get used to). In January I went back an dabbled with the novel again. I enjoyed thinking about the plot and how it had evolved in just one month and possible paths I could take it on, but I had a hard time actually writing. At first I blamed that on how poorly-written what I had done was (usually things like that bother me a lot until I fix them). So I went and did some slight editing, but that was hard too. I just didn't want to work on it. I felt discouraged anytime I opened Word (even before pulling up the document with my story in it).
That wasn't all that bad. It was just writer's block. I had read a lot of stuff about writer's block and figured it wouldn't be that hard to get over. So I did what all the advice said. I wrought other things (that is why over the past few months I've gotten more into poetry), I thought about my story and came up with some new ideas for it, and generally didn't push it that much.
I'm not exactly sure when it was, I think it was March, I tried writing my novel again. I hardly did anything. The entire time I was thinking about a conversation I had had with my father near the very end of November talking about the length of my book. Based on all the plot twists and whatnot I have in store for my story, me and my father predict it will be somewhere between 100k and 150k words. I only have 15k. I just couldn't stop thinking about how much writing that will be.
It got kind of depressing so I just stopped working on it (which I know was a really bad move on my part). A couple weeks ago I decided that I need to do something about it. I started thinking about my story again, but nothing sounded inspiring. I was also thinking a lot about my poetry and which poems were better. I realized that the best poems were always the ones that I felt the strongest about. The ones that I really poured my heart out into. The ones with meaning.
So in the end I started thinking about what my story means. What is it for? I can't answer that question. As far as I can see it's just something I'm writing because it sounds like a really cool story (the kind of thing I would read). And honestly, the only reason I can see someone reading it is because they want something to read and don't have anything better.
I don't want that. I want to write something with a meaning, with a purpose. But I don't know what. There isn't anything that I feel strongly about that I know enough about or that has the right context to build a novel off of. I know I want to write a novel. I loved that feeling, in November, when I was spinning my story. I want to write a novel, but I can't do it just because.
So what I'm wondering is is this really writer's block? or is it something more? Have I got writer's block so bad that I'm coming up with excuses as to why I don't want to write my novel? Or is it that I genuinely don't want to write this anymore, and should find something else to write? How do I tell?
I don't know anymore. I just don't know.
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