A Novel Idea

I have a bit over a thousand words to go on my novella. Something that can be done in one sitting, yet I've averaged about two lines a day for the last few days...maybe a week.

Thinking, yet again, that I've gotta get this done, it's finally dawned on me that I left out about that much on the original Quinn tale before I was seduced by the Shomi contest. And I left about that much on the first draft of the Shomi novel before I decided that pushing for that particular publication wasn't the right thing for me.

I have no particular insight or strategy to get me to just grow up and do it. But I figure that realizing this particular mode of self sabotage will bring me that much closer to changing it.

I've been struggling with the Shomi project from the beginning. I dumped my first idea, characters and all, replacing it with a dream I had. And I'm still not happy with it. I finally decided last night to stop stressing over it and just read something--no fiction writing at all.

I settled on The Good Guy by Dean Koontz, mainly because I couldn't stand the idea of a story I'd already read and this had been sitting in an unopened box since it had been, all unwanted, delivered six months or so ago.

Donno why Koontz triggered it, but I found myself thinking about the advice newbie writers get. Way beyond "write what you know" there is "write what you love." Well, duh. I don't love Becoming. I'm writing it out of desperation to get a story out there.

The second thing that's come up from the Koontz reading is a desire to get back to my own story. Unfortunately, that desire is for Quinn's Tale, not Becoming.

On the one hand, that seems to be all I need to know and I should stop trying to force this story. On the other hand, writing what I love will either have to eventually come up against the reality of writing for a living...unless I want to give up on that.

Hmphf.