rowyn | NaNoWriNoMo

I was just looking at Krud's Opendiary, the only Opendiary I still read. Usually I visit every few months, when I've caught up on my LJ friends list. Then I leave notes on almost every entry, by way of making up for my long periods of neglect (or something).

Krud participated in, and completed (yay Krud!) NaNoWriMo this year. On the first entry where he talked about doing it this year, I was leaving a note to explain why I'd never done it. Then I realized this was going to be a lot more than 400 characters, and I might as well make a little post of it in my own journal. So:

My Excuses For Not Participating in NaNoWriMo

I've already written a book. And as of this year, I can promote that excuse to "two books". None of the other people I know who've written books use this as an excuse, but I think there's a certain point to it. The first time I heard about NaNoWriMo, the event creators were touting it as an opportunity for all those people who said "I want to write a book someday" to stop putting it off to "someday" and do it. From 1993 to 2001, I was definitely one of those "I'll do it someday" people. But I first heard of NaNoWriMo in 2002 or 2003, by which time I was already dedicated to finishing Prophecy. I reasoned that I did not need to participate in NaNoWriMo to prove to myself that I was serious about writing. I was proving that to myself every week already. At this point, I consider it proven. I could still use a "NaNoEdMo" or "NaNoSubMo", given my lousy track record on editing and submitting for publication. But NaNoWriMo isn't about publication or polishing, it's about getting out that rough draft, and that part I've already done. Twice.

I don't write that fast. I've never written at the pace NaNoWriMo requires. My fastest writing pace ever was when I worked on the ending to Silver Scales, when I would get up at 4AM so I could write a couple of entries before work. Even the 30 days including that period only added up to 40,000 words or so. Granted, the "peak inspiration" period was only ten or eleven days, and during those I was averaging over 2000 words a day. But that was the most inspired I've ever been in my life, and even with that going on I wasn't doing that much better than the minimum needed per day for NaNoWriMo. So I have serious doubts about my ability to meet the deadline.

50,000 words isn't a novel. I like the way Ubersoft put it best. I realize that the terms of NaNoWriMo specify that you've succeeded if you hit 50,000 words even if your book isn't finished. But if I'm going to try writing a novel in a month, I'd want the novel to be done at the end of the month. And given the length of my last two books, 50,000 words would give me less than one-quarter of the story. It just wouldn't be very satisfying for me. On the flip side, it'd be good for me if I could manage to fit a book into around 50,000 words. But I think the odds of my padding to make up word count are much better than the odds of my writing concisely in order to finish the whole story.

I don't like editing. I suspect it would take me much more than a month to edit into shape a novel I'd spent only a month writing. And I would enjoy the editing much less. Editing is inevitable in any case, but I think I'd rather try to get a story in as good shape as possible on the first pass, rather than trying to get it down quickly and planning to go over it again and again afterwards.

And all this said, I know that calling this list "excuses" rather than "reasons" wasn't an accident. There is a lure in the idea of writing a novel in a month. I remember the fierce joy of completing "Peace and Joy in Twenty-Four Hours" -- though the first several hours were agonizing, most of the time was spent in a blissful creative haze. I felt that same elation as I finished Silver Scales. The joy not of "having created" but "of creating", of being in the actual process of making dreams and fantasies come alive. That delicious fugue. I may tell myself "you can't force that to happen just by wishing for it", but I forced it to happen with "Peace and Joy". Maybe I could do it for writing a book, too. Maybe I should try.

Someday.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

I liked this entry (and not just because I'm in it. ':P) But since you've already got one list of counter-arguments, I felt that I should provide my "counter-reasons" for participating (which I attempted to do and failed in previous years.)

1. So have I. It was 80,000 words, took me six months to write, and it was horrible. (Krudita and my friend Bill are the only humans besides myself to have ever seen it in its entirety.) And I've written chunks of other books (I estimate that between the half-dozen or more "serious attempts" at novel-writing I've done over the past decade or more, I've probably written 200,000 words, at least.)

2. The deadline is the primary motivating factor in this exercise, which is all it is, really, in my opinion. It forces your brain to come up with some fiction that it might have never released otherwise. (Oh, and I kept with many aspects of that "pledge", except for deleting a chapter.)

3. By your logic, "The Great Gatsby" is not a novel, nor is "Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy". (Which, by today's standards, maybe they aren't. But that ties nicely into my distant rant about four-year-olds allegedly reading novels. ';P) I understand your desire to be "done" with it by the end. That was my goal as well. I would have even settled for halfway. But at the very least, this gives me a foundation to build upon. I'm far less likely to give up on a story that I've got a third written then, for instance, a story like "Portals" (which I'd never even finish a sixth of.) Or my "Leaper" novel, which never got past chapter 3 of 24. (I doubt I could be happy with a 50k novel under my belt, really.

4. The reason you don't like editing might be the same reason I don't like editing: Perfectionism. I want to "get it right" the first time, impossible though that may be. I fall in love with my first version of prose that I write. And thus, I hate to sacrifice my babies (via editing) for the greater good of the novel. Which is one of the ironic "benefits" of this approach: you don't have TIME to make it "great" the first time around, so when it comes time to edit, you are free to make the merciless edits, cuts, rewrites, and reshaping that is so painful to do normally. Like Chris Baty (NaNoWriMo founder and perhaps insane genius) put it, "The only thing you can't edit is a blank page." [This is a truncated description of my feelings on the matter, and I could probably write a book chapter or more on the subject... as probably you could also. ':)]

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One of the things that happened when writing this, that I was told would happen, but I didn't think would happen, is that the characters made some surprising "decisions" that I hadn't expected. Being the anal type, I actually plotted out the entire story arc before NaNoWriMo began, so I thought I knew what was going to happen and who the main catalysts would be.

And then, several secondary characters came to the forefront and nearly stole the show. People I'd merely put in to round out "the cast" became loveable additions, and events that I thought would play out exactly as I'd anticipated, in the rush of writing, were suddenly turned on end, to the point where I, as the author, had to ask myself, "Great, how are they going to get out of THIS mess?" And I loved it.

Maybe you encounter this all the time in your regular novel-writing. If so, I envy you, because it's rarely happened to me. (Except during those bursts of creative frenzy that have happened in the past, but not so much recently.)

For me though, even if I never do anything with this book (which, I still hope to finish and edit it), the community feeling of all of these people striving toward a common goal was fun and invigorating. And the nifty congratulatory letter once I'd succeeded in reach my goal (and exceeding it by a couple hundred words) gave me a rush of accomplishment, the likes of which were, for me, normally reserved for far less constructive pursuits (like defeating the End Boss in Half-Life, or succesfully crafting a cool weapon in World of Warcraft.)

In a way, it was like a game to me, only I actually have something to show for it afterward. (Granted, a very rough, not-ready-for-primetime something, but still.) Anyway, this note is far too long, so I'll just hush up now. ':P

My characters do veer off from plot and do unexpected things. Especially in conversations. They'll talk about all kinds of things I don't plan for, and won't talk about the things I want them to. Given half a chance.

When I was writing Prophecy, I wrote out of sequence and so the characters had to stick to the plot, for the most part. I think this is one of the reasons I didn't enjoy writing that book so much. Though even there I found myself inventing things I hadn't planned for.

Okay, I guess now that I think about it, that used to happen to me, too. (Technically, the entire plot of the "Portals" book that that you read part of, was one unexpected thing after another. Though that's an extreme example, where I was just writing, never knowing where it was going. [I guess that's what happens when your only catalyst for a story attempt is the line "I hate shimmering blue portals"...])

Really, when it all comes down to it, NaNo is no different than any "group activity", whether it's thousands of people watching cars go round and round in circles really fast, or a bunch of people getting together, dressing up in semi-authentic renaissance clothes, or a bunch of people calling in and voting for their favorite showboat camerahog. If you get into it, great, if not, that's fine, too. I didn't really feel like I was missing out on a whole lot the last few years it took place. But this year, I'm glad I really got into it. (Going so far as to post on the message boards and whatnot.) I'm usually very anti-bandwagon about things... if a ton of other people are doing something, that increases the odds that I won't want to. (This, more than anything, is probably why I don't watch sports at all.)

Anyway, if I had already been actively writing (like you have), then I would have probably felt far less compelled to give it a try. But I wasn't, so I did it, and I think I'm better off for having done it. I don't know why I feel defensive about it, but... there ya go. ':P

(Oh, and I totally agree with you about the thing about replies to notes and communication and all that.)

NaNoWriNoMo

Thoughts From A NaNoSkeptic-Turned-Apologist

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Re: Thoughts From A NaNoSkeptic-Turned-Apologist