Welcome to the Insecure Writer's
Support Group! Every first Wednesday of the month, writers from all
over the blogosphere confess what's been troubling them in their
writing over the past month. IWSG was set up by Alex J. Cavanaugh (you
can check out his blog here!), and you can check out the awesome
brand-new official IWSG website here!
(P.S. If anyone knows how I can add the
IWSG button to my blog, please let me know! I'm really not tech-savvy
and I have no idea how to do it!)
So this month, my IWSG post is focusing
on, yup, you've guessed it – NaNoWriMo.
So far, I'm doing an okay job of
turning off my inner editor, and refusing point blank to listen when
that little voice pipes up saying 'hey, you know those last 2,000
words you've just written? It's utter crap! Why don't you just go
back and tinker with it a bit....' So while learning to lock my inner
editor away in a cage and throw away the key is proving to be a
little difficult, that's not the aspect I want to focus on today.
Today, I'm feeling insecure about my NaNoWriMo characters.
I know these 50,000 words are going to
be crap. That's fine. But what I'm terrified of is that even when I
come to edit this 50,000 word monster, readers are still going to
hate my characters.
What if they can't relate to them at
all? What if they think they're 'wooden'? How on earth do I inject
life and soul into these characters, that are so alive in my own
head, but aren't necessarily coming out well on paper??
I'm so scared that people will think my
FMC is just completely cold and un-relatable - true, I intend for her
to be cold hearted at the beginning of the book, and as I'm planning
on writing a series, I don't want her transformation to be completely
obvious by the end of the first book. Yes, I want her to grow and
start to see the error of her ways, but I don't want her to change
instantly – otherwise, how else can I develop her in the next two
books?
What if people also think my MMC's
motives are questionable too?? If all goes to plan, he's going to
develop/change/grow a lot quicker than my FMC does, but what if
people flat out don't like him? I'd be heartbroken! I love my MMC to
bits – in fact, when I first thought up of my plot, it was
originally going to be about my FMC's journey, but now, I think I
want it to be more (or at least equally) about his journey too, as
he's just as pivotal to the story.
So that's my neurotic rambling for this
month! Sorry if the post is a bit long, but it feels good to get it
all off my chest ;). I can't wait to visit everyone else and cheer
them on today, whether or not they're doing NaNoWriMo!
Happy Writing!
