likethebeer

Well, I'm ahead of the word count, but as I told

ghostwes, I'm definitely in a sophomore slump. I'm afraid that I am, alas, running into my greatest obstacle: lack of imagination.

I really wonder where my imagination went sometimes, because even into my teen years, I could be wonderfully imaginative. I know, I'm no longer a teenager and am not aiming to be one, but it would be nice to have that part back sometimes.

Yes, I have no imagination. I joked that last year, things went well b/c I was writing about where I lived. I set myself up in a bad spot this year, I'm afraid.

I got my inspiration for the story line last January, of all times, when a Sullivan building burned, followed 2 weeks later by a Wright building burning. So I thought, "Great! I'll have the MC run around, see FLLW buildings, and terrible things will happen!"

'Cept everything has mostly happened outside of CHicago. I know Chicago slightly, but not enough to write significantly about it. Oh, and the Wright buildng was in Gary, and really, what can I say about Gary ('cept it reminds me of NJ without the smell of the oil refineries?--oooh--I didn't put that into my latest nano; should do that I think).

So I'm writing about places I don't know, and since my characters are travelling, there are no firm auxiliary characters for them to bounce off of.

So, I don't know what I'm writing about, can't describe the places, and have no consistent characters except for 2.

I can see from the outset that this is a problem.

However, there are 2 things going on in my head right now:
1). This is nanowrimo. As long as I get to 50k, I'll have "won" and I have a year to edit.

2). There was a writer's challenge for my region "Wisconsin: Elsewhere" (love the term) for this weekend. That definitely makes me want to write, even if it is dreck.

and it will be.

There are points in this novel when things seem to click, but mostly it's just mindless meandering. And (a) there haven't been enough murders/mayhem, (b) I still have no idea who's doing all of this and (c) well, there have been 2 murders, and our heroine hasn't even spoken to the cops.

Although she's had 2 dreams, which is a great way just to write nonsense.