Day 9: Doldrums

Facing a severe case of the doldrums with my novel. I’m just shy of 20k into it, and I find myself severely bored with what I’ve done to date. A big problem with it is that I honestly don’t know where its going. For a short story, its fine to start writing without a direction. Generally speaking, by the time you find your point, well, pen down, your done! Like marriage and fatherhood, there are lessons in writing that can only be learned the hard way, through experience.

And experience is telling me my story is committing suicide as we speak.

Not even teen angsty, glitzy suicide, with drugs and rock and roll, but cliche ridden suicide. My characters are literally running from one cliche to the next, not even taking the time to exploit the cliche they find themselves in before running to the next. Characters? Hah! There’s no depth to these one dimensional fascades that is worthy of the moniker of “character.” Caricature is more like it, cheap depthless shells barely containing a modicum of emotional reaction to the story unfoldinfg around them.

So where to, Oh Captain? To forge ahead and see if I can recover as I go? To start anew, perhaps this time with a semblance of a “big idea,” maybe even (say it isn’t so) a plot?

I honestly don’t know. My gut says better to start fresh, wipe the slate and find the story for real this time. My accountant taps his foot, points at the clock, and points out the time already invested that’s been lost if I do that.

Damn it.