Fweee!!! It’s coming!
For those who’ve been living under a rock, NaNo is NaNoWriMo–National Novel Writing Month, and if you think it’s a travesty go take your whinging somewhere else.
Still here? Good. ’cause I’m really excited and I want to babble.
Lots of people (apparently–I avoid ‘em all I can so I’m not sure “lots” is an accurate number) take NaNo way too seriously, or in the wrong way. There are those who complain about the “glut” of novels that will be sent to everyone and their brother in the publishing industry in December. Those who decry wordcount goals, who believe that over every word a writer should agonize for hours, to be sure it is the right one.
But I say industry pros can spot an amateur effort a mile away (NOT saying all NaNovels are such!), and that some people don’t see writing as an agony, and don’t want to do so. That doesn’t make them bad writers! (Really, it doesn’t.)
I’m in that second group. I love to write. I can’t wait to write. And like many writers I know, I tend to procrastinate all over the place as soon as I sit down to write.
NaNo breaks me free of that. NaNo brings in that joyous spirit of we’re all in this together, wtf did that muse just say, hey, wait, who took all the bavarian creme donuts, more caffeine, yes! NaNo succeeds in that nearly impossible goal of making a competition that’s friendly enough I want to be part of it. We’re not racing each other, you see–it’s all of us, going for a goal, and helping each other along the way.
Yes, help. With the Trebuchet Club (work a Trebuchet into your novel, any way you can) and Dares (I dare you to write your main character snuggling a penguin!) and the procrastination threads (it’s not YOUR fault you didn’t finish–we distracted you! Don’t feel bad), we help each other to the goal (or to not feel like a failure because Real Life, always a killer, interrupted) and care about each other and have an absolute blast with each other. And believe it or not, there’s a Delete key that will get rid of all the foolishness once we’re done playing.
Do I need to hunt up some quotes about the relationship between playing and creating?
Many of us finish the month with 50,000 words of brand-new manuscript. Since I write short first drafts anyway, that’s nearly a novel. Odds are at that point, I’ll be close enough to the end for the flow to carry me to the end.
“Every first draft is perfect, because all a first draft has to do is exist.” ~~Jane Smiley, Pulitzer Prize winner
“The first draft of anything is shit.” ~~Ernest Hemingway (do you NEED me to tell you who that is?)
“It is perfectly okay to write garbage–as long as you edit brilliantly.” ~~CJ Cherryh (if you don’t know who she is, or the incredible depth and breadth of her work…)
So yeah. Eleven months out of the year, I labor for the right word. I edit, I plot, I plan. I research and (reluctantly) deal with Real Life, and I whip my hurried first drafts into shape.
But in November…in November, I write.
