Birth of a Novel 2012 - Objection Completion #4

I fail. Well, depending on your definition of "fail." I didn't complete any of my set goals this week. However, that's not to say that I didn't do anything. In fact, I feel like I did quite a lot.

I put my "shelving" binders together for ROYALLY BURNED; FOREVER, FROG; and AFTER AUSTIN. I even made a whole video about it (seen at the bottom of this post).

I finished labeling all of my posts so my blog is "perfect." Everything is in order and my brain is completely at ease.

School is in order and I feel as if I'm ready for my semester tests. I'll be getting my PSAT results any day now!

Even though I did all of these things and I'm proud to have accomplished them, I still feel kind of guilty about not completing my goals. The whole time I was working on all of these other things, the worry about not doing what I said I would niggled at me. And I didn't like it.

So. I've reached a decision.

I already planned on stopping Birth of a Novel at the beginning of the new year since I have a new goal setting system I want to try. Now though, I think this is a better stopping point.

The rest of December is for friends and family and fun. I have my best friends' birthday party to go to this weekend. Then Christmas. Then laziness because I won't be in school. ;) I don't want to be worrying about specific goals, especially since I have a habit of setting them too high. I want to enjoy the season.

I leave you with this, my last Birth of a Novel wrap-up.

Last week's goals:
1. Reach 37k on OBJECTION before I go to bed on Sunday. Didn't get to at all.
2. Reach 40k on OBJECTION by next week's BoaN post. I did actually make some progress on OBJECTION. Yesterday I managed to get to 32,393 words.
3. I will do jumping jacks for the duration of three minutes every day. I am proud to report that I completed my three minutes on Thursday, Friday, Monday, and Wednesday.

This is the song I do my jumping jacks to.

This is my shelving vlog.

Letting Your Brain Babies Go

I started writing my first "real novel" when I was in third grade. My mother had put one of my birthday presents in her closet and forgotten about it. It was a journal. Upon discovering it two months later, she gave it to me.

Thus, it began.

This must have been around the time I was into ERAGON because I determined to write about a dragon. Her name was Diamond and she was black, hence the title BLACK DIAMOND. I dove into it without any real thought, being eight years old. I worked on it periodically now and then and slowly a bit of a plot and other dragon characters started to appear.

Years went by and I started it over about four or five times, never finishing a full draft. The "novel" evolved. Eventually, my story gained human characters.

In seventh grade, I started writing poetry and spending time on the Neopets writer forum. There I learned about NaNoWriMo.

Thus, other things began.

I finished my first draft of THE LULLABY, reveled in this first time accomplishment, then went back to my old story, now entitled RUBIES AND SILVER. I had begun to put at least some thought into my stories by then and the idea occurred to me that I could somehow connect the two novels. Later I, luckily, vetoed this idea.

More time passed and I started rewriting THE LULLABY and contemplating THINKING OF YOU. My friend of old had fallen to the wayside and this worried me. I went to great lengths to revive it, reworking major parts of the story, though keeping the same characters and main conflict. It became ROYALLY BURNED. You may remember me mentioning it.

You may also remember that I've never really, really done anything with it. Sure, I planned out a whole continent and attempted to start drafting, but that's not much, not enough. ROYALLY BURNED doesn't grasp me like my newer stories, doesn't hold the same appeal. I'm essentially beating a dead horse.

But... I'm scared to let go of my very first characters. In a way, I still love them, still smile when I occasionally think about those long-ago-written scenes.

However, it's time to let it go.

And not just ROYALLY BURNED. There are two other ideas I'm shelving, at least for the near future: FOREVER, FROG and AFTER AUSTIN.

You may remember when I started the first draft for FOREVER, FROG and failed miserably. I don't know if I've ever mentioned AFTER AUSTIN in a post, but it's been up on my Projects page. They're intended to be verse companion novels.

There are a few reasons I'm dropping them.

First, as with ROYALLY BURNED, they're just not speaking to me. They haven't in a long time. I never fleshed them out, especially AUSTIN, and that might be the source of it. However, I have too many other stories to focus on at the moment to try.

Second, I don't know if I can write a verse novel. I can write poetry, and I can write novels so I don't see why I couldn't write a combination of them. Something just feels off about it. I normally wouldn't let the challenge stop me, it's always an adventure to step out of your comfort zone, but that's a project I would need to focus all of my attention on, and I just can't do that right now.

Most importantly, I'm not ready to write about these subject matters, mainly child kidnapping/molestation and rape. I don't know why I ever thought I could tackle them. They're too big for me, especially at this stage in my life. I've been thinking perhaps I could work these stories in a different angle, away from these topics, but again, that would take time I don't have right now. Maybe in a year or two.

To make a clean break with these stories, I'm going to go through all of my writing files and find the bits and pieces that relate to them. Then I'm going to buy some grey binders, just as these novels are now displayed in grey on my Projects page, and fill them with those odds and ends. Then I'll put them away, up in my closet, though I may never completely forget about them.

Have you ever had to shelve a project, temporarily or otherwise?