Being Too Negative – The Climb #620

Tuesday 3^rd November 2020

I’m in a bit of a quandary.

So I’m not happy with the start of this novel I’m writing for NaNoWriMo. It’s not that it’s bad, it’s that the thing I’m heavily using for an influence has a very distinct start and I feel I should be emulating that.

Except, this is its own thing. Having influences is all well and good, but they should be influences rather than a pastiche. It’s not like this proposed style of start is common for the subgenre.

And this start works. I’ve built it with sound crafting principles.

So my logic tells me that I should just go with it and worry about it afterwards. This is, after all, a first draft and not a final draft. It’s not like I don’t have loads of experience of rewriting novels.

Except, I just find myself being incredibly negative about it right now. But for no good reason.

I try and be a positive person, and whilst I get there’s fear in starting something so new (new protagonist, new world, new novel), I feel my subconscious is being negative for no reason.

Usually I’d listen to my gut. Often it’s telling me subconsciously of a fault I’ve yet to grasp but this one seems to be that my opening doesn’t have enough explosions in the first chapter.

Ordinarily, that would be telling me that there’s no conflict, that the stakes are not established, etc. Except they are, they just don’t involve explosions.

Like many fantasy stories, there’s an element of stepping into another world. Whether that be, leaving the shire to courier a ring, or walking through a wardrobe, you have to first establish the world they are leaving behind.

In short, my gut feeling – a source of trust for many years – is betraying me and I can’t figure out why. Heck, even if it is wrong… this is a first draft.

It’s really scuppered my writing today, and whilst the negativity has been building, it’s really come out of leftfield today and stopped me progressing.

That’s OK though. I’m not a person who writes every day, so missing a day won’t derail me. But I do want to know why my subconscious has done this to me.