NaNo Failure. Sort of.

So, this year’s NaNo is likely to be a NoGo for me. My story, as stories are sometimes wont to do, turned out to not work very well.

Part of my problem, I think, is that I forgot that age-old rule for all writers: Write What You Know.  Except, perhaps, in this case, it should be amended to “Write What You Believe.”

I read a lot of speculative fiction. Generally, it’s my favorite broad genre, and within that genre I read pretty much every end of the spectrum, from the most realistic of hard sci-fi to the most fantastical fantasy, though my usual preference is something somewhere in the middle of those.

And here I was finding myself writing a hard sci-fi novel. Immediately I hit roadblocks with having to research things. I’m an English major, not a scientist, and my general approach to science tends to be one of awe. I appreciate science and scientists, and I believe in their work. However,  other than a grasp of the scientific process and the means used to ensure objectivity, I can’t claim to really understand science, particularly medical science (which is what my novel dealt with) very well. I’m a little better off when it comes to technology and gadgets and mechanical things, due to a gamer geek’s love  of computers, but still, this was a difficult genre for me to attempt from the onset.

However, given the time to research the material that I needed to research, this limitation could have been overcome in the editing process if not for the one unforgivable problem plaguing my novel.

I had no emotional attachment to it. The world was not one that I could find myself moving comfortably into and staying there a while, perhaps because it was too close a representation of the real one.  The characters didn’t seem to be living and breathing as they should be, especially by that point in the novel.  I didn’t care, really, what happened to them, one way or the other, and I knew that if I couldn’t care about or identify with these characters, my readers wouldn’t care either.

So I set it aside.  But I have continued to use NaNo as a tool for what I’ve always used it for: A refresher course in Discipline.  I picked up new project instead.  I’m writing 1000 words a day, at least (usually more), and plan to continue doing so.  1000 words is, I’ve found, an easily manageable daily goal, and it builds up faster than you’d think.

I won’t win NaNoWriMo this year, but I have been successful in reawakening Good Writing Habits, which was the whole point of the exercise to begin with.

National Novel Writing Month, Writing NaNoWriMo, Writing