Flundering and Faltering

This has got to be one of my worst Novembers in a good long while. Really, the only good thing that's happened this month is the election, and I'm thinking that that won't really change for the next twenty-four days or so.

I've decided to start over on NaNoWriMo because Urban Decay just wasn't working out. I don't know. I just didn't have any ideas for it. The problem with starting over is that I don't have any other ideas.

I've come to the inherently depressing conclusion that I can't really write stories that end. Having roleplayed for so long has probably been a horrible influence -- in roleplay, I don't have to write endings, I only have to write deaths. Writing fanfiction obviously doesn't help either, especially since a vast majority of that dribble I've written, especially recently, is a single, canonical moment in time, which I'll describe in tedious, introspective detail. There isn't really any story to be written -- just emotions to expand upon. And thus, all that writting of "story" and I've really not written any kind of story at all.

It's kind of an epiphany really -- I've always wondered why I was just so bad at coming up with endings. Ideas I come up with just write themselves in circles until I get bored. There is a lot of slice-of-life crap kind of half-written stories on my computer. They don't end. Nothing ever ends. No wonder I can't finish writing a novel.

Currently, I've got 900-odd words on a fresh NaNo start. I was inspired by some miscellaneous strip of A Softer World, but I don't know where I can take those 900-some words. And I'm still thousands upon thousands of words behind. I'm supposed to have 10,000 words by tomorrow today. I don't even have one-tenth that. It feels like it's been an awfully long time since I've seriously entertained the idea of giving up on NaNoWriMo for the year, but I think I'm getting to that point. I've not been feeling very inspired or motivated in general for some reason.

It's not been a good month so far.