Writing and Real Life

[swirlsofpurple]

I have to start writing nanowrimo tomorrow, and I have no idea what I'm doing. I've got a story sorted out in my head but I now want to do something else that I can do better. And I'm turning 26 in two days and I have no idea what I'm doing with my life. This is not a freak out.  

When I turned twenty five I promised myself that I would have some things done by the time I turned twenty six, given that there are only a few days left it’s probably time to acknowledge that I failed. I did pass my driving test, but the pros of being able to drive elude me when I’m healthy, single, with no kids and living in London where there’s more public transport than I could ever need, and I have to pay four pounds an hour (or more) for parking, and seventy quid bi-annually to park outside my own house (not including road tax of about 200), sky-high insurance and petrol, and a complete inability to comprehend all the one-way systems. But hey, I passed first time, yay me.

But I still say with all the hope and naiveté of before; 26 is going to be the golden year, I will get things done, I will achieve, I will make things happen. Twenty six sounds way better than twenty five anyway.

I keep telling people I want to be a writer. I don’t even know whether it’s true anymore I’ve said it so many times. People see me writing and they say, I think you should be a writer, and I’ve given up saying I probably shouldn’t be. And also may’ve slightly fallen in love with the idea of being a writer, the idea of being able to do loads of different weird jobs, and going to different places, and doing different things all in the name of research. And then just sitting at home and writing, in a house with bookshelves. Because I long for things like bookshelves, I’m sad like that.

I do think that it may partly be an esteem issue at this point. (This point being at which I feel in a constant state of my-brain-bled-out-and-ran-off-with-a-spoon). Where I feel like writing is maybe the only thing I could do, which is a mentality I really don’t want to fall into, because I know it’s just plain wrong. Okay I may not have much in the way of marketable skillsets, but I’m enthusiastic and a quick study. So I don’t want it to be something I do because I feel it’s all I can do.

One of my friends suggested I stop writing fandom meta and start writing on real issues, like academies. Though she did seem to imply that was mainly because she wanted me to stop ranting about how the new academies are going to ruin the British education system, and just write about it instead. I pointed out that there were already a brilliant series of articles on the subject, and I didn’t have anything new to say, other than not to blame me when our future kids go to school where you get a’s for buying cokes, and then pointing out that the reason I couldn’t write non-fiction is that I tend to exaggerate to the point of lunacy J. 

One of my main issues with fictional writing is character development, I basically just fail at it. Which is why I enjoy writing fanfiction where the characters are all ready for you. I know it may seem like I don’t write much fanfic, but that’s mainly because I only post a small fraction of what I write. I’ve done the thing where I base new characters on people or characters I know, but it still somehow fails. I think in a way there’s a necessity for characters in fiction to appear more three dimensional than in real life, because in real life a person merely is who they are you rarely get to know what drives them, what has caused them to really be that person, the true deep crevices and nuances of their character, unless you become very close to them. The difference in fiction is that everyone is looked at through a microscopic focus, for a long period of time, and the parts that you would never see of a real life person, are the parts we so rely on to make them real and convincing.  

Anyway I’m participating in nanowrimo next month, so I guess I’ll see how that goes. It’s very, very scary though, not only the idea of having to write about 1700 words a day. But the person mentions that everyone has read many books and that prepares you, and I start counting how many books I’ve finished reading this year, fearing it may be in the single digits (it’s not, but close). And I’m trying to keep the number of characters down, but it’s already looking like it has to be at least six. Is anyone else doing nanowrimo? And because apparently that’s not enough writing I’m also taking part in a fic exchange, because I have no self-control.

Thoughts on writing anyone?

Comments

[swirlsofblue.livejournal.com]

Ooh, that's cool. I'm going for horror, I was thinking of having a character develop stockholm syndrome, but the more research I do the more I think I'll handle it like an insensitive jackass, so I might just go with straight up horror and they're conveniently relatively psychologically okay after events.

You could always set yourself a lower target than the 50 000, if that makes it easier. Yeah, I'm under the name Rubini (I'm not sure whether I made the R upper or lower case), that's actually my real name that no one except for the government uses.

[tenshinrtaiga.livejournal.com]

Friended you back. Also, 50,000 is the minimum requirement so you can only go over it, not under it. If you go under it, then that means you failed Nanowrimo (though that sounds a bit harsh, doesn't it?). But if you "pass" or "win" or whatever then you get a pretty icon and bragging rights for pretty much the whole year (until the next Nanowrimo)... Okay, actually the icon's not very pretty. But the bragging rights are fun.

[swirlsofblue.livejournal.com]

Cool. And yeah, it wouldn't be 'winning' but there seem to be loads of 'pep' talks flying around saying it's okay to aim for under. I suppose it is extra special to win ;D.

P.S. I spent months last year bragging about writing 20 000 for tvd bigbang, and people were surprisingly ridiculously overly impressed.

[tenshinrtaiga.livejournal.com]

LOL