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.

The Night Before

What, starting entries for NaBloPoMo when I've still got a day to rest? I've forgotten how to sleep at night because I haven't done it in two weeks; that's my excuse for this.

My roommate, who will be participating in NaNoWriMo for the first time this year, has been trying to get me to start/finish outlining my story tonight. The idea I'm going to run with -- Urban Decay -- has been kicking around in my head since about March and was originally intended for a comic until I realized that drawing it would require me draw a lot of buildings and perspective, which I'm just not up for yet. So when she suggested I use it for NaNo instead, I thought it was kind of a brilliant idea. Except now I actually need to think about more than just vague and stupid concepts that don't necessarily connect.

I have a premise. Kind of. I know it takes place in some post-apocalyptic era, but I don't know how the apocalypse happened or why. I don't know how things are now, I just know my protagonist is gonna try and start a revolution! ...That isn't much to go off of, is it? I don't know his motivation or his past; I don't know how the story will end... that's the main rub. Not having an ending means I don't really know what direction I should/can take it in and is the main obstacle a vast majority of my fiction works face. I can't write anything until I know how it's going to end... that's also one of the main reasons I dislike my 2006 NaNo so much. It didn't have an ending. My 2007 NaNo had a beginning and an end, but no real middle, but that was still better than having no end.

This year... I have neither a beginning nor an end. How problematic!

After talking with the roomie, I/she narrowed the main plot of my story down to two possibilities, but it hinges a lot on point of view and whether I would write it in third person or first person. Each possibility only really made sense for one POV. I think I will probably end up going with third person... the first person plot depends a lot on the "unreliable narrator' dealy, which I'm not all too confident I can pull off... I also haven't seriously written in first person since 2004, when I finished my last piece of chaptered fanfiction (ever want to read a 100,000 word epic about Digimon characters killing each other?). Maybe I should try and get back into it? Not sure about that one.

Roomie just gave up for the night and went to sleep (damn, I need to be up in six hours. When did it get to be almost four??), so I get to put off answering her until then.

I kind of have a bad feeling about midnight tomorrow. I'm going to chill in a coffee house with some people to write...