NaPoWriMo=ERRRG!

Okay, this is tougher than I thought. I signed up for National Pony Writing Month (which is a sort of spin off of National Novel Writing Month, except that it must involve, obviously, ponies), and when I did, I was thinking, Hey, I can write 50,000 words in thirty-ish days! No problemo, let's do this!

Ten days later, I've scraped my entire first project (which was at over ten thousand words by Day 5). The amount of panic in my brain is overwhelming. Right now I'm thinking at a terrifically unhealthy rate, and I'm wondering just what the hell I'm gonna do now. Anyone else having this problem?

Comments

[BubblepipeWrangler]

Well, considering this was back in August, I really think anything I write won't be very useful. Unless somehow Time Turner's involved in all this business. In the interests of helping out a fellow writer, I can suggest this. Before you embark on any large-scale project, find out if it will work. Force yourself to do thumbnail scribblings of three or four ideas on the first day. Just sit down with something like Notepad or Q10 and hammer out a thousand words worth of characters, notes, universe stuff, and plot. Then, save that, open another file, and do it again with something along another line of thought. Even if your first or second idea is awesome, don't stop! If you get inspired on one idea, of course write down all those good brain-waves. They might just come in handy later!

Once you've got those four or five scribbling-files, since more is always better, take a break. Make a sandwich, have some tea, go outside and frolic on the pavement while mourning the daisy-field it once was. Then, come back to those ideas and look at them. If one jumps out at you, give it a little more time. See if you get tired with it too quickly. If so, go on to the next one. If not, go on to the next one anyway! Try to write a little two thousand word story for each idea. They will be horrible, but no one else has to read them. The point is to see how quickly writing about each idea becomes boring or annoying.

After all that, which sounds like quite a bit, you will probably feel one of those ideas calling to you. If you can go back to that idea and really get into the concept, then you're probably going to have something you can play around with for a good fifty or sixty thousand words. If not, hey, it's still day one. You've got all these idea scraps sitting around you now. Maybe that one about sky pirate Scootaloo will come in handy in the story you actually do write, or perhaps Fluttershy taking over the rulership of Equestria for a day can be used as an excuse for that gritty Griffin invasion you were working on!

That's my experience, at least. It's much easier to build a strong scaffold from ideas and design a cool story inside that than it is to write yourself out on a limb and run out of ideas partway to your goal. That only causes stress, which is the opposite of success.

Hope that helps! By the way, thanks for favoriting my story.