Shiny things

One of writing problems is losing focus on the story I'm currently writing. No matter how attached I get to a story, there's always a time when I feel so totally immersed in it and so aware of every possible twist and turn coming up in the story that it starts to become boring to me. The story itself isn't boring, but the process of telling it is, and at that point I can be easily distracted from my goal.

Once you set off down the path of actually telling a story you end up having to commit to a certain version of it, closing down all the other versions of it in your head and forcing one definitive account of it into being. At the same time, though, lots of other potential stories start cropping up in your head to tease and tantalise you with all their potential for story telling. They're lovely bright and shiny things that lure attention away from the apparently slightly dull and tarnished in front of me, telling me that they're a lot livelier and more interesting than the dull and familiar one I'm so used to.

That's why I need to commit to things like NaNoWriMo and 100,00 words in 100 days as they help to set up blocks to keep me away from the shiny things, and working on just one story. Otherwise, it's too easy for me to say 'I'll just spend a couple of days working on this idea, then get back to this' - it's not long before that couple of days becomes a week, and then I repeat the process and go on to something else, and before long I'm 6 or 7 stories away from the original and they're all unfinished.

As an aside, that's how I know I was suffering from a block last year, not just dissatisfaction with the current story - there wasn't anything else rising up to take my attention away from it.

So, this is my declaration that I shall keep on with this story until I reach the end, and I won't work on anything else unless I've already done my 1000 word target for the day on this one. Fingers crossed that I keep to that promise...

Total word count at the end of yesterday: 16,100