Novel Writing...in hindsight

So, after my brave words, I gave up Nanowrimo after a measly week or so. But this surrender feels like a victory. I have to say, in somewhat self indulgent terms, that, while I did not write a 50,000 word novel, I did learn something about myself as a novelist. And a writer in general.

What I found was that I actually am a fairly terrible novelist. I tend to write fiction in a sort of Tolkein wanna-be way, whatever my feelings towards Tolkein himself, and since my talents are nowhere near as vast or aptly developed, I come across as somewhat self important and naively wishful. I fill my pages with verbose, intellectual description that is as strikingly wearisome. Although my vocabulary may be impressive, I use it to linger in the murmuring of dire warnings etched in the landscape, not to advance anything resembling a plot.

Although I liked my Nanowrimo concept--a girl who discovers that her father's late wife, her stepmother, was in fact a selkie--I found my method of telling it to be abhorrent. So I did the noble thing and gave up. I feel rather free now, actually, since I know that all I have to do to write a good story is focus on the story, not the surroundings. This realization has inspired me to return to some works-in-progress that I long ago gave up in frustration. Post-epiphany, I can now write dialogue, action even, without too much pain. I made a great start on a novel I've been working on since the tender age of five, and never managed to get going satisfactorily. Who knows? Maybe one day, when I become a best-selling author of tightly paced action novels with sharp dialogue and quickly progressing plots, I will return to My Stepmother the Selkie, dredge through the endless description and extract something worth reading. The plot itself might need some work, because as it stands now, this is how the improved version would read:

"My stepmother is a selkie. Let me tell you the story."
"I have always lived by the sea."
"I love the sea."
"I hate the sea."
"I have ambivalent feelings towards the sea."
"That's because my stepmother's a selkie. [see above]"

Ah, see? How refreshing. Story without description. There lies my ambition...