It’s November.
It’s currently pouring rain.
In Minnesota.
Did I mention it’s November?
Last year at this time we had snowbanks (and then it melted and barely snowed again all winter…bwuh?) but today we have rain.
Weather just keeps getting weirder all the time.
1.) I briefly entertained the idea of doing NaBloPoMo again this year. But then I remembered that last year wasn’t really a positive experience so…no. Blogging for 30 days straight didn’t kickstart anything, it didn’t make me a better writer, it just made me dread the task at hand. If I start to dread writing something is very wrong.
Anyway.
2.) This week marks the start of Bob’s year-end vacation spree. He barely uses any vacation time all year and then takes it all at the end. Short weeks, long weekends, and the last two weeks of the year all to ourselves. (Pesky holiday-social-obligations notwithstanding. I’m really dreading the drama that’s inevitable this year.) I get so spoiled with him home so much and it’s awesome.
3.) Sifting through some old blog entries, I realized this current bout with writer’s block has been hanging around for over a year at this point. I’ll get brief moments of inspiration and spill out a pile of words here and there, but for the most part, it’s still sitting at critical mass and I’m trying really hard to not start hucking rocks at people.
4.) I’ve been going through a lot of my existing writing projects, trying to figure out the problem areas, and what I might be able to do to fix them. Ninety percent of the time, it’s the narrative. I get a fairly solid outline down on the page and then time comes to fill in the narrative and it all goes to hell. Narrative is the bane of my writing existence.
We’ve been over this.
5.) I’ve been thinking a lot about Ben & Marina lately. I haven’t really touched that story in a long time. It’s always poking me whenever writing is on the brain—which is…always—but I decided to step back for awhile instead of trying to force things that weren’t working. I opened it up again recently and read through pieces here and there and was once again reminded how much I love this project. I have the majority of major plot points in place, I just need to connect them all with proper narrative. I even have an actual beginning AND ending written for this thing. It’s that damn narrative problem that’s killing me. As much of a [self-inflicted] headache explaining the dysfunction between Ben and Marina can be, this story has some of my very favorite scenes I’ve ever written. And once I finally got the character list right, I haven’t felt the need to overhaul it like so many other projects. Even stepping away from it for so long, I still love the cast of characters at the core and that’s not a common occurrence. And maybe by the time I finish this damn thing (HEY—A GIRL CAN DREAM) I’ll come up with a proper title for it, because the code name Reunion From Hell is completely irrelevant these days.
—
 |
Our Finest Year Better Than Ezra |