NaBloPoMo 2010 ... #4: Need A Jump Start

Well, kids, it's just not kicking into gear this year. For whatever reason — and I can think of a hundred of them — the words aren't flowing this year at all. I'm hoping to free-write my way out of this corner, but I feel like my creativity, at least as it pertains to writing fiction, has a good deal of rust that needs to be rubbed off before this stuff will start to flow smoothly.

Some of this is simply re-immersing myself in this world. Just as it takes one awhile to find one's way back into the environment and characters of a novel one was reading, the problem is exponentially increased when writing one. And sometimes I wonder if finding one's way into it again is even possible without completely changing the characters. I'm not the same person I was in 2007, and in some ways I feel like my characters have changed too. But I'm trying to ignore that for now and focus on simply finishing the novel's structure.

That's one of the realizations I'm having as this goes forward, a fuller understanding of Anne Lamott's "shitty first draft" concept. I really am only writing the bare bones of what's going on ... it feels like there's very little meat here, very little inner character. I can sense what's going on inside Walt, Sherry, Arden, etc.... but to take the time to do the meticulous work of crafting each sentence, like I know will have to be done at some point ... it's something I'm shutting out right now. Just get the skeleton. Then we'll start on the sinew.

But one part of this story continues to nag at me, and it feels like a major turning point. I've gotten my main character back to his home, and a major conflict that he believes he should not be involved in ends up sucking him in anyway.... And while I know what that conflict is, I just can't find the words to describe it. At least not yet. I've made numerous attempts at it, and it all falls flat, feels weak, flimsy, shallow. I can feel this issue beginning to consume me more and more ... and while that might be detrimental to other parts of my life, for the writing part of me, such obsession usually ends up being a good thing.