Hi fellow writers! Well this is my first NaNo and I'm slightly off my word count. Truthfully, that's an exaggeration, I'm well off where I should be with my word count!
Have any of you come across a demon in your head that while writing you get this paralyzing fear that everything you are writing has already been written about? I'm at the point now and I'm trying to push through it. But I feel like I'm just ripping off some other great novelist. I'm not talking about plagiarizing, but it seems like I could find exactly the thoughts I am writing about in a dozen other books...mostly on my bookshelf!
Any suggestions?
Good luck to everyone!
-emily
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67,126 / 50,000
Nov 10, 2007 - 13 28
Emily, the panic is normal. My suggestion is do it anyway. It doesn't matter if it's been done before. It doesn't matter if it's complete and total CRAP! Just write. We all borrow ideas without meaning to. The important thing is to make the story and characters your own. As long as you aren't using a copyrighted name or copying directly from another author, you are fine. Plagarism is a bad thing, but by borrowing or building on an idea, you are not plagarising. However, if you use another author's place names, character names, total story concept, well then Yeah - bad you!
Take a long, hot shower, relax with some good music, sit down at your computer and just start to type. The important thing is to write. I have a book that I started ten years ago. I set it aside, quite writing it and didnt got back to it for nearly seven years. It was terrible! I scraped all but a few pages and started over again. Now it's a really good book and I'm very proud of it.
If you can't think of a story right away, start by describing your characters. Start with a name and go from there. You can do this with all your characters, both major and minor. I find that baby name websites are really useful. I have an entire category on my favorites that's for names. You can type in a characteristic and get a list of suggestions.
I've done one over to the side with my hero.
hero - name Hero - Wil Van Lipsig
1. hair color, style, length dark brown, wavy hair, to shoulders
2. eye color dark brown, almost look black
3. height Approx. 6'8"
4. weight Approx. 325 lb.
5. build Very muscular
6. age He looks about 25 yrs old
7. education Mostly self-educated
8. occupation Marine Colonel - black ops
9. intelligence Off the scale
10. married or single Single
11. superficial, emotional, a player, a real jerk He treats women like they're disposable.
12. how he treats people around him He’s usually polite and will not tolerate rudeness.
13. what others think of him He’s a very loyal friend but it must be
earned. He isn’t very nice to most people.
51,815 / 50,000
Nov 10, 2007 - 14 04
A thousand bucks says that you're not the only one who feels that way.
I can make that bet with impunity because I also feel that way - many of my characters and ideas, or near copies of them, can be found in my DVD cases or on my bookshelf.
Simple laws of probability state that there are just too many writers out there for you not to share some ideas with some of them. My suggestion would be to just keep at it and don't worry about whether you're not original enough. Your originality will show through, even if it's not blatantly apparent (I once tried to write a blatantly original novel and it failed miserably).
50,066 / 50,000
Nov 11, 2007 - 10 13
Audre Lorde: "There are no new ideas. There are only new ways of making them felt."
It's okay to feel like you're just stealing somebody else's idea, but the key to making it creative is making it your own. Last year, the defining quality of my characters was that they were all mentally and physically scarred. This year, I have a cast that seems to enjoy bucking stereotypes a bit too much.
I feel that way all the time, but what I've discovered is that the best way to sort of get past those particular feelings is to basically make it what I want it to be, be it a stereotype or not. Sometimes, cliches are there for a reason, and they're not all that bad. It's fun to try and buck them, but writing what you like and what you know is important, too.
Or, just listen to Chris Baty! From the Daily Pep-Talk Prep cards:
NaNo - Day 5
One of the best ways to learn something is to emulate those whose work you admire.
The treat (and task) for today is to drop by the bookstore and pick up a novel by an author whose voice you've always loved. Read the first few pages of your purchase before you start writing, and pick out the methods the writer uses to create the mood you find so appealing.
Is it the folksy vocabulary and the informal writing style? The electric buzz of clipped, declarative sentences? Or the poetic, lyrical style of flowing sentences and sensual adjectives? Whatever it is, borrow the elements you love and use them throughout today's writing session.
It's totally okay to borrow. ^^