Nano 14

My Nano project is so lame. I now know this about myself: I cannot rush into a writing project. Everything is scattered, ideas had and forgotten, changes made midway through only to be hated the next day. I may not need to completely outline a project, but I need to have bullet points. Things seem a lot easier to achieve when they are on a bullet point list, is all I'm saying.

I'm conflicted on whether I'll continue with Nano or not. If I don't, it wouldn't mean the end of this story. It would mean slowing down, figuring things out, probably starting from scratch. Those are all things I'll have to do anyway, even if I reach the arbitrary goal of 50,000 words. Seems silly to waste my time writing more crap that I just have to wade through later. It also doesn't help that I'm just over 20,000 words, and I think I'm supposed to be around 23,300 or something. Oops.

If you could see my main character right now, you would understand this hesitance to continue. She's all over the place as the struggle to maintain her lies becomes too much. I didn't really intend for the lying to become the main point of the novel. I wanted the character arc to be more like this: at the beginning she finds herself to be a complete bore and wants to break through whatever keeps her that way and become more lively. She makes this rash decision to not really go to school (but lies to her family). For the first time she has no idea what she's supposed to do, has no expectations to live up to, and with the help of some new friends she begins to break out a bit and enjoy life. (I hope this isn't repetitive from other posts; I sometimes have short term memory loss, it seems). Having her be pregnant complicates the story arc, certainly, which is a reason why I've considered having her not really be pregnant. But there are advantages to that option as well...

At any rate, right now she is a bit insufferable with the lies and covering up of said lies. It's not going the way I wanted. I may just start a new chapter of the way I want it to be and pretend the rest of it doesn't exist. Could work.

Thing I Don't Understand:
Why do artists write really great songs and then after two minutes decide "Ok, that's a wrap!" And then these same artists will write a bunch of songs that are a perfectly acceptable length but they are LESS GOOD. Perhaps this is an indication of lingering pop love from my teens, but I say when in doubt, do the chorus again. When only 1:55, do the chorus again. Recent examples of this: Regina Spektor's "Ballad of a Politician," Tegan & Sara's "Soil, Soil," and M. Ward "Vincent O'Brien." Oh my gosh and Cult's "You Know What I Mean." That song kills me at the end and masochistically, I would like it to kill me longer. Do better next time, music people. Please and thank you.