Reading, and not-writing

Hello. So yeah, NaNoWriMo just didn’t happen for me this month. Every single day I think about writing something, anything, but I gave up on actually doing NaNo weeks ago. It’s really strange, because this is the first time I’ve *ever* not done NaNo when it hasn’t been because I’m so completely depressed and/or suicidal. Earlier this month I wondered if my dis-interest in NaNo was maybe a sign of my depression coming back, but I’ve been fairly okay the last few weeks. Had a couple anxiety attacks, but nowhere near what it used to be, and no serious depression at all. I’ve never really experienced not wanting to write without it being because of my mental state, and I’m sort of not sure what to do about it.

I still have those ideas, both the new story ideas and the ideas about continuing Amanda-story-sequel, and I still want to write those eventually. I also recently acquired a new Amanda-story scenebunny, not the sequel but the original story, because writing stories out of order means there are almost always little parts in the storyline that I skip over and may not write for a long time (… or never write). With Amanda-story I skipped the 2-3 weeks in between them getting their “normal” relationship back on track, and the ending revelation. It may even need to be a month or so in between. I wrote the first couple days of it and then just skipped to writing the ending. So this new scenebunny takes an idea that stems from the way Amanda views their relationship, and kind of adds a little acknowledgement of that from Meg into the last couple weeks of the story.  I think it could add something to their dynamic, if only it being that Meg is showing Amanda that she knows and understands how Amanda feels about things. It may even make the ending better, since it will better show that Amanda’s end-revelation is a step forward from how she thought of their relationship before. So I’d like to write that… Eventually. Whenever my muse/motivation/etc comes back.

In reading news… I haven’t been, not much. Finished my two LibraryThing Early Reviewer books that I was struggling with (not struggling because they sucked, just because I wasn’t in a reading mindset) and posted reviews for them. Have one more Early Reviewer book that needs to be read/reviewed, but haven’t started it and probably won’t for another week or so.

My reading priority right now is finishing the beta of my friend’s awesome story, the beta that I really should’ve been done with by now… Originally I had wanted to be done with it by the end of October so I could concentrate on NaNo this month, but yeah that didn’t happen at all. And I’ve recently been informed that my memory seriously sucks, because a part in this story that made me *freak out* with surprise and confusion and excitement was apparently in the first draft that I read a few years ago?? Totally don’t remember that at all. Which I guess is good, in a way, since the less I remember about the old draft the better I can be about looking at this version with new eyes? *shrugs*

NaNoWriMo, to do or not to do?

Okay. So. It’s currently a tiny bit into November 5th, and I have written exactly ZERO words for NaNo so far. Nothing. Nothing at all. Not even a few rambling sentences. Nothing. And I want to, I want to so freaking badly, but it’s just… Not happening.

I have two semi-coherent ideas, one about a girl that goes to a boarding school and falls in love with her roommate, and the other that I think I mentioned awhile back about childhood friends getting reacquainted and falling in love. They are both interesting concepts where I have a couple ideas for scenes that I’d like to write, but neither of them are really grabbing me… That “omg I must write this! Omg these characters are awesome! Omg what on earth just happened here?!” that always happens when I get totally into a story idea, it’s just not there.

I love Remy-story-sequel dearly, this particular story-world is by *far* the longest thing I’ve ever written, both wordcount-wise and time-wise, I love the characters and I love the storyline and a part of me never wants to finish it because I can’t imagine not writing it anymore. And yet doing it for NaNo isn’t really possible right now I don’t think, I’m completely stuck with the current plotline. There is another plotline earlier in the story that I never finished writing out, and technically I guess I could try working on that, but I don’t know.

Amanda-story-sequel is something that *could* be finished as-is, the last part I wrote could work as a fairly good ending,  the promise to forget about the little slip-up and just keep what they have without really examining what the slip-up could mean beyond “it shouldn’t have happened”. But then, what if it didn’t end there? Because, now that Amanda has made one slip-up, it’s possible it could happen again. And what then? If it happens again would Meg make good on her threat to move out? What would happen if Amanda’s husband found out about the slip-up, would he freak out, would he kick Meg out, would he possibly think about leaving Amanda, or is it possible he would be understanding? The more I think about it the more I want to continue this story and see where it might go. So, I guess I could try to continue this for NaNo… Although I severely doubt even these new ideas have the possibility of 50,000 words.