Why I Will Never Participate In National Novel Writing Month

(And Why Some People Do)

 

Because I am diametrically oppossed to the stated purposes of National Novel Writing Month:

National Novel Writing Month is a fun, seat-of-your-pants approach to novel writing.

Oh. Well, I actually agree with that aim 100-percent. Novel writing should be fun most of the time.

Valuing enthusiasm and perseverance over painstaking craft, NaNoWriMo is a novel-writing program for everyone who has thought fleetingly about writing a novel but has been scared away by the time and effort involved.

But here I part ways…

Enthusiasm and perserverance are to be valued--for sure--so why does the conclusion of this sentence contradict itself? Someone who has "thought fleetingly" and has been "scared away by the time and effort involved" isn't perservering or enthusiastic.

Oh. I get it. This isn't a contradiction, but rather, the handy statement-of-problem-and-intro-to-solution structured sentence. My bad.

So what's their solution for otherwise enthusiastic and perservering writers to overcome their fear of time and effort?

Because of the limited writing window, the ONLY thing that matters in NaNoWriMo is output. It's all about quantity, not quality. The kamikaze approach forces you to lower your expectations, take risks, and write on the fly.

But I don't want to lower my expectations. Nor do I want the quality of my writing to suffer in service to speed. When someone reads your book, they could care less how long it took to write it. They simply want to read an entertaining, well-written book.

A kamikase approach forces writers to "take risks" they probably don't want to take (more on this a minute). Such an approach also eliminates the very real risk involved in trying your absolute best, and knowing that your best might not be good enough to enthrall your intended audience.

That's risk. Worthwhile risk.

By favoring quantity over quality, what a writer really risks is reinforcing bad habits…

Make no mistake: You will be writing a lot of crap. And that's a good thing.

Uh, no. Writing a lot of crap is good practice for writing crap. This is NOT a "good thing." This is a bad thing. Unless. that is, your aim is to excel in writing crap. I assume the goal of most writers is to write the best prose they can.

There is much truth in the saying "repitition is the mother of all skill." Recent research into what separates great artists and musicians from the merely good identifies the amount of "deliberate practice" [emphasis mine] as the single most important variable.

By forcing yourself to write so intensely, you are giving yourself permission to make mistakes. To forgo the endless tweaking and editing and just create. To build without tearing down.

I would argue that writing as fast as you can, and not bothering to edit much if at all is the antithesis of writing "intensely." My definition of intense writing emphasizes precision; taking the time necessary to capture the vivid, fresh, unique image; rewriting individual sentences and paragraphs until no alternative wording more perfectly expresses the idea you intended to communicate. Yes, time and effort are required. Time and effort are good things.

One could argue that NaNoWriMo is really about creating a novella-length rough draft, and that participants can go back later and edit / rewrite the "crap" they've produced, leading to a second or third draft. But they don't argue that (at least on the "About" page I'm quoting from). Instead:

They started the month as auto mechanics, out-of-work actors, and middle school English teachers. They walked away novelists.

Novelists? Really?

Maybe if participants did in fact edit and rewrite their initial 50,000 words into something representative of their absolute best work, then yeah, I think I could call them novelists at that point… But this additional effort would take longer than a month in most cases. So maybe "National Novel Writing Month" should be renamed to: National Novella-Length Rough Draft Writing Month. (True, it doesn't have quite the same ring to it--but hey--in the spirit of nanowrimo, this post is all about quantity, not quality.)  Then December could be National Rewrite Your Crappy Novella-Length First Draft Month. But I digress…

As for the "permission to make mistakes," you already have this permission everytime you sit down to write--no one-month deadlines required. Even when striving to compose prose of your current highest quality, you'll flub up constantly. But it's the striving to write better that eventually makes you better.

I could go on, but alas, my work in progress is calling me, so I'll try to wrap this up. I need all the time I can get, because it takes me much longer than a month to complete a 100,000+ word polished manuscript.

I'll never participate in nanowrimo, but if you would enjoy doing so, by all means, knock yourself out. Just go in with your eyes open. Understand the very real (and well researched) risk of reinforcing bad habits through unchallenged repetition. And be willing to do the hard work involved in editing and rewriting your rough draft into something more likely to be read and enjoyed by others.