Post NaNoWriMo Ennui

I’ve never run a marathon (I’ve never run anything longer than a couple of 5Ks) but I hear it’s pretty exhausting.  I often compare NaNoWriMo to a mental marathon though, so I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised at how exhausted I am having finished it.  

Each year as I get excited preparing for NaNoWriMo, I always wonder why I didn’t get more writing done after November.  2013 was actually a pretty productive year for me writing-wise.  Even so I still wondered why half my novels have taken two years when, if I wrote more consistently, I could easily get them done in one.

Now I’m starting to remember.  It’s the week after nano and I’ve only poked at my story.  (Rather like a pre-adolescent boy poking at a dead body with a stick.)  All that energy and movment is completely gone.  This year I didn’t even finish off all my pre-planned bullet points.  I still have a few more scenes that I know need to happen, but I can’t seem to figure out how to care about them enough to write them.

I did go back and re-read what I’ve done so far.  The section where my young lady assassins appear still amuses and interests me greatly.  I’m already kicking around an idea for a sequel to frame their backstory.  In fact I’ve been toying with the idea of doing something really, really, really stupid.

I’ve been toying with the idea of doing a comic.

Drawing and writing comics were my first love as a child.  However, I have drawn almost nothing of significance in the last three decades.  I did, however, get a rather inexpensive Wacom drawing tablet late last year, and my drawing hand has been getting itchy as I’ve browsed through some instructional videos on youtube.

I’m probably just going to start with some character sketches with the idea of using them for the cover of my next book.  Then we’ll see where it goes.

That’s assuming I somehow get this book done.