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Worth It
It’s
9:57 P.M. on July fifteenth. I’m sitting at my desk, staring at a blank page in
my notebook with a pencil in my hand and no ideas left in my head. Normally,
I’d be thinking about going to bed right about now. Unfortunately, Camp
NaNoWriMo is halfway over, I’m three days behind on my word count, and I’ve
barely written three pages today.
I
have to admit that writer’s block has me feeling as trapped as my characters.
That’s saying something, since one of those characters is in a heavily guarded
dungeon, has lost his last ally, and is in so much pain that he’s wondering why
he isn’t dead right now. I’d like to blame his situation on my characters, but
no, this time it’s completely my fault. I can’t deny that. I also can’t deny
that his situation is about half the reason for my writer’s block.
I
sigh and drop my pencil. I flip back through the last ten pages in my notebook,
looking for inspiration and instead finding several spelling and grammar
mistakes and nearly falling down a plot hole. I linger for a moment over the
plot hole, hoping that fixing it will make my character’s situation slightly
less impossible. It doesn’t. If anything, it makes it worse. So, I leave the
hole as it is and flip back to my blank page.
I
start to pick up my pencil, but stop. The page glares up at me, and I glance at
the clock. 10:12. I’ve just spent fifteen minutes getting nowhere. Then again,
I’ve spent all day getting nowhere, so what’s another fifteen minutes?
Returning
my attention to the notebook, I pick up my pencil and start to jot down a
sentence. I stop halfway through and grab my eraser. My character feeling sorry
for himself won’t do the situation any good, though I suppose it might boost my
word count by a few hundred words or so. More importantly, I’m dismayed enough
as it is without my character having a pity party.
Despite
my best efforts with my eraser, I can’t get all the pencil marks off the page.
The faint lines of the deleted words seem to taunt me. I can’t even come up
with a single sentence I like. In the
page margin, I calculate exactly how many words behind I am. I should be at
twenty-five thousand, five hundred words. I have just over nineteen thousand,
nine hundred, which means I’m behind by a solid five thousand. With a mostly
stifled moan, I drop my pencil again. Maybe
this isn’t worth it.
I flip through
the last ten pages again and find more mistakes, more places I should’ve worded
something differently, more places a character should’ve said this and not
that, and another plot hole. I consider the synopsis of my book. When I first
came up with the idea for the plot, I’d been so excited. Now, however, I can’t
help but consider how similar it is to other books I’ve read. I slump in my
seat. Let’s face it. My story is lousy. I
should just give up now. The idea seems rather attractive, in an “I-just-don’t-care-anymore”
way. So what if I won’t complete this Camp NaNoWriMo? You can’t win everything.
Maybe it’s time to admit defeat for once.
I
close my notebook, not bothering to put a bookmark in it like I usually do. I start
to stand and walk over to my bed, but stop before I can climb in. I think again
about my character. He wants to give up.
He has a lot more reason to want to give up than I do. But I wouldn’t let him
give up. I never let any of my characters give up, at least not for long. So
what right do I have to give up on them?
Slowly,
I turn around and walk back to my desk. Instead of sitting down in my chair and
opening my notebook again, I kneel on the floor and pull open one of my drawers
containing my finished notebooks. One by one, I lift them out: seven black
composition notebooks and two spiral-bound notebook. I consider what it took to
fill these notebooks. Hours of brainstorming. Hours of trying to find just the
right words. Hours of trying to figure out how in the world to get my
characters out of the messes I’ve put them in. Hours of not giving up, even when I’m stumped and my characters refuse to
cooperate with anything I want them to do.
I
look up at the bookshelf across the room. Rows of novels greet my eyes:
paperbacks and hardbacks, classics and contemporary novels, fantasies and
nonfiction. All so different, but all with one thing in common: the authors
didn’t give up. Come to think of it, neither did the characters in those
novels. They kept struggling through, even when things got tough, and because
of that, they succeeded. I glance at the notebook sitting on my desk. Even
without writer’s block, it’ll be difficult to succeed, to achieve my goal of
fifty thousand words by the end of the month. But it won’t be impossible. The
only thing that could make it impossible to succeed is if I give up.
Is giving up really worth it?
I smile and
place the notebooks back in their drawer. I know the answer to this question:
it isn’t. And so I won’t give up. I’ll keep working, keep trying to write, and
keep trying to figure out how in the world I can get my character out of the
predicament he’s in. At least now I think I know how to give him a little hope
to keep trying.
I
stand. Pull out my desk chair and sit down. And then I reopen my notebook, pick
up my pencil, and start writing.
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Note: the introduction is true. The story is not, though it is based on my life. I hope you enjoyed it!
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