NanoCryMo 2012

Guys, I don't think I have it in me to complete National Novel Writing Month this year. Two years ago this November, I pounded out the first draft of Fidelio. I made myself work from the beginning to the end, because the end was what I was really looking forward to. I wanted to write the scene of Leonora being a badass so badly that it was a visceral urge to sit down every day and write the chapters that led up to it. I drove my family nuts. I practically lived with my friends Ella, Kristina and Jonny at their apartment, because they were also Nano-ing and we were each other's cheerleaders. I took my laptop to the used bookstore I worked at and stole precious minutes in between customers (of which there were few). I watched the Zurich Fidelio obsessively; listened to every single recording of the opera I could get my hands on; borrowed library books on PTSD and the psychology of grief, on Spanish history and architecture, on the Enlightenment in Spain (which books were awfully hard to find). I crossed the 50,000 word mark four days before the end of the month, and finished the darn thing on the evening of November 30th. I was left with a big, fat, beautiful, plot-hole riddled mass.

It was one of the best months of my life.

I gave my brain a week or two off, then dived right in to the editorial process. I was still at it last November, so I didn't participate in NaNoWriMo last year. This year, I'm still in the editorial process, but not in nearly such an intense, focused way. This year, I decided to set aside Fidelio for all of November, to not even think about it, and to write something completely different. I've got the idea, the characters, the setting, the plot. Is it happening? Nope.

Don't get me wrong, I won't stop. I just don't have the spark that I did with Fidelio. I haven't been inspired. Writing Fidelio was a joy, but this one? It's much more like work. And it doesn't help that my team lives in three different countries (Ella=USA, Kristina& Jonny= England, me=Germany). I just feel like this story is doomed before it even gets off the ground.

And that's my whiny post for the day.