All I Have To Do

I knew when I was working on my NaNoWriMo novel that the story wasn't right. It lacked, well, everything except snappy dialog. I'm really good at dialog. I should probably write plays instead, since they're all dialog, but I'm pretty sure that there's a law that if you live in LA, you have to write screenplays instead of plays, and I don't want to be yet another one of those LA people who is working on a screenplay. Ever. (Unless a shit ton of money is involved, and the check already cleared.) It's bad enough that I work on the West Side. Lord help me if I turn into a West Side douchebag  cliche'.

Anyway, about my NaNoWriMo novel, I kept at it in the hopes that it was just my usual poor opinion of any story I'm currently working on, but after a few weeks away from it, I realized that it was, indeed, total crap. To begin with, it was the wrong story for those characters. What they were doing was interesting, but none of it added up to much of a plot. Plus, they had no compelling reason to work together to solve anything. But the biggest problem was that everything felt so contrived.

Everything in books is contrived. With the exception of typos, every word is there for a reason, every event was planned. Nothing just happens. Part of the craft is making it seem as if it all naturally occurs the way that it does, so when a writer, who knows that it's all contrived, can't even convince herself that it works, you know it's bad. So I'm 22,000 words into the rewrite, and all the puzzle pieces are scattered across the table. All I have to do is start linking them up to build the bigger picture.

All I have to do.

All.

*snort*

Yeah, this writing thing is a piece of cake.