Life of Randy: Now With More Failure

I’m currently very far behind on my attempt for this years NaNoWriMo. Initially, I set out to just wing it, sit down day one and start, see where the story would bring me. Unfortunately, this plan was the absolute worst thing I could do. By going into this in such a way, my story refuses to come together beyond an initial premise:

A Man wakes up and sets out to destroy the world.

This premise coupled with one of the bleakest openings I’ve written (or read) has resulted in zero progress. The premise could result in an interesting tale if handled properly, but I don’t think I’m up to this story this time round. As it is now, I’m abandoning this story and tabling it for another day.

This does not mean I have given up on NaNoWriMo, this just means that this years attempt will not be completed before the deadline of 30 November 2011. I will going back to the drawing board, and over the next few days will be planning out another story from scratch. When Saturday afternoon/evening arrives, I plan to begin the writing process once more. For now, I will rest, and tomorrow I’ll look over some old story ideas to see if anything is promising.

This will be yet another one of my failures recently, but I’m hoping it is one that I will learn from.

The Only Thing Better Than A Third Cup Of Coffee Is A Fourth Cup Of Coffee

Before I move on to important things, I did not make the above animated gif. I found it. All the other gifs seen on this blog were made my me. So enjoy them and please if you use them don’t link back to the original source. Now to more important things…

THe above image perfectly depicts how I feel after coming home from work: wired and antsy. I’m happy to be doing something with my time other than sitting around doing nothing. Unfortunately, work is already wearing me down and eating up all my time. I can confirm that I will not meet my goal of completing a 50000 word novel by November 20, 2011. I am OK with this. I am still participating, and I’m going to write as much as I can before the deadline. I’m just taking a few days to plan and brainstorm, as my original story idea isn’t panning out. So back to the drawing board for now.

At the moment I’ve got two ideas, I don’t know if they’re good ones, but I think they lend themselves to a story better than what I have now. Either I’m finally going to write the story of The Santa Claus Strangler or take the idea from my failed collaboration with JD, and just write the whole story from scratch, but with the story progressing entirely how I saw it.

Wish me luck.

I Am Scared

I’ve not written a single word toward my novel today. I am absolutely terrified. On the plus side, I started officially working. Its not much, but I’ll be working 28 hours a week. Definitely enough to get by on for now. Tomorrow night I’ll have to sit down and try to make up for the lack of writing. Part of it I think is that I just don’t know what I want to write, the other part is that maybe what I’m attempting to write isn’t any good to begin with. I’m almost tempted to just say screw it, scrap the 400 words I’ve written and plan over the next few days an actual story. I don’t think I’ll be able to just write without some sort of a plan or guideline. But I’m not quitting. I will attempt this endeavour, and I don’t care if I succeed or fail. The journey (CLICHE ALERT) is what matters in this.

Smells Like Failure

The first day isn’t even done, and I’m already regretting participating in this years NaNoWriMo. I am so unprepared for this undertaking and I don’t like where its taking me. I’ve written barely 400 words and oh lord is it bleak. My story begins with a man waking up, realising he’s miserable, and deciding to set off on a journey to end the world.

BLEAK.

I don’t know if I’m just being hateful, or what. My Protagonist just told a bunch of birds that he’s going to sing the song that ends the world. I don’t know where this story is going, or what. I already know I’m not going to finish it. It has to be a false start.

Once again, BLEAK.

I’m going to stick with it for now, but I’ll probably call this a wash before the month is through. Maybe it’ll help me work through things, or something. Ugh.

What Have I Gotten Myself Into

I really don’t know why I did this, and I know I’m going to fail. I will be participating in this year’s NaNoWriMo. For those not in the know, NaNoWriMo refers to National Novel Writing Month, which usually falls in November of each year. It is a challenge to write a 50,000 word novel in 30 days or less. I’m going into this blind. I don’t have any particular story, no characters, nothing. I will fail this. I know it, but you know what? I don’t care. I’m writing this for me, nobody else. It’ll be bad, but if I can do it, I’ll have something to be proud of.

This is actually the third time I’ve attempt to write a novel in my short 27 years of life. My first attempt was in High School, when I had planned to write a short Fantasy novel as a present for my father, based on a shared love of JRR Tolkien. I never got past the planning stages and got bogged down in the backstory of my characters. My second attempt was a few years ago, it was to be a collaboration with my buddy JD. I had wanted to go into it blind, and just write a chapter, hand it over to him, and have him react to it and so on and so forth. That failed miserably, and I know it was me who held it back. Once again I got hung up on the back story of the characters. This time, I’m going in with nothing, just an opening line.

I’m hoping that this for once doesn’t end up in failure.