My writing fear

National Novel Writing Month is coming up in 19 days and I'm debating whether or not to take part in it. This really shouldn't be a debate. I'm taking 18 credits, 3 lit classes and have more to read and write than I could possibly ever want to do. But, I really, really, really love writing so there is that.

("But you can write on your own time whenever!"someone is surely saying. To which I say, "shush")

Quite possibly the only thing that is keeping me from fully committing is that I don't know what I want to write about. My previous two successful attempts had a game plan (of sorts....as close to planning as I get. Outlines are for suckers!) I knew what story I wanted to tell, the themes that I wanted to convey, and then I let things take over from there. I have three half-baked ideas for my next attempt to half-write the Great American Novel.

1. An urban fantasy story which combines a wee bit o' string theory in with the land of Faerie.

2. A fictional account of a person who grows up in a country that has recently seceded from the United States, paralleling their experiences growing up with the new country gaining its footing in the world.

3. A revival of my lone failed attempt at NaNoWriMo in which a small town bartender learns the value of working in his community, and to not overlook it just because its small.(He ends up becoming a teacher, for the record)

And here's the thing: those brief notes are about as detailed as these stories are right now. They aren't anything more in depth than that. #2 may be the most thought out of the bunch, honestly.

My fear, which I suppose is shared by a lot of writers, is that these ideas will never be more than ideas. I rarely get fixate on the right word or sentence in a story, but I will lie awake at night trying to coax the other half of these ideas into existence to make the story whole. There are these ideas that get inside your head and for whatever reason they stay there. They won't go away. (and if you ever see me scribbling furiously in a notebook during class, chances are I'm working on one...I never was much of a note taker) For me, it is a fear that these ideas that stick in my head won't flush themselves out.

Maybe these ideas need to be written down to achieve that. Maybe I need my fantasy troop to go out and find Higgs Boson to figure out why this idea has any significance. I don't know if it is just a matter of sitting down and seeing where the story takes me. Perhaps the reason why my last two stories aren't completed is because I had the end in sight. Maybe I need to start from the beginning and just write till these stories finish themselves. That may be the only way I ensure these characters don't die inside my mind.

Maybe I need to stop saying "maybe".

I'll keep you posted.

If he's not here, than where...

Alan