{"id":915,"date":"2019-11-11T00:44:44","date_gmt":"2019-11-11T05:44:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nicolewillson.com\/blog\/?p=915"},"modified":"2021-07-12T09:11:28","modified_gmt":"2021-07-12T13:11:28","slug":"in-defense-of-nanowrimo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/nicolewillson.com\/blog\/in-defense-of-nanowrimo\/","title":{"rendered":"In Defense of NaNoWriMo."},"content":{"rendered":"

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(Before I begin, a note: There are any number of writers who don\u2019t like NaNoWriMo because it\u2019s not compatible with the way they work. However, they don\u2019t dump on the program or its participants. The following is definitely not directed at them.)<\/p>\n

We\u2019re in the thick of NaNoWriMo now; I\u2019m well into Draft Zero of my new novel The Perfect Candidate<\/i>. (I swear\u2014despite the title, it has nothing to do with politics. OR DOES IT? AHAHAHAHAHA *sob*)<\/p>\n

Something that rolls around every November as predictably as NaNoWriMo itself? NaNoWriMo haters. Again, I get that NaNoWriMo is not for everyone. But it\u2019s not enough for these\u00a0detractors not to do it themselves; they don\u2019t want you<\/i> trying it either. I read these rants the way I might keep poking my tongue into a sore spot in my mouth; I know it\u2019s going to be annoying, but I can\u2019t make myself stop.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

NaNoWriMo does not actually need defending; it’s huge, and it’s not going away. But I hate to think of people who might enjoy\u00a0it being dissuaded\u00a0if they see an author they like crapping on it. I don\u2019t want to call out specific people, so instead I\u2019ll address some of the most common complaints I see every year.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

1. \u201cNaNoWriMo tells you it\u2019s OK to write crap! Why in the world would you want to waste an entire month writing crap!?<\/i> That\u2019s no way to learn how to write a novel.\u201d<\/b><\/p>\n

This is an extremely misunderstood part of NaNoWriMo that\u00a0detractors love to repeat. NaNoWriMo\u2019s organizers certainly don’t\u00a0encourage<\/i> you to write crap. But they emphasize that your first rough draft is going to be just that\u2014rough<\/em>. And that\u2019s OK<\/strong>.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Embrace the messiness\u2014try adding plot lines and characters you might delete later on, just to see what happens with your story. Silence your Inner Editor, they tell you; there\u2019ll be eleven other months to fix whatever\u2019s wrong.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

That advice got me through my first NaNo novel\u2014the very first novel I ever completed\u2014in 2011. Up until then, I\u2019d write a novel by getting one chapter down and then tweaking and revising that one chapter over and over until the story lost all momentum and I abandoned it.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

During\u00a0NaNoWriMo 2011, I taught myself to look at just enough of my previous day\u2019s work to reorient myself in the story, and then I\u2019d ignore it while I focused on the next chapter. And then the chapter after that. And so on. Bird by bird, as Anne Lamott would say. And before I knew it, I\u2019d written an honest-to-God novel.<\/p>\n

Yes, my first NaNoWriMo drafts were\u2014and are\u2014terrible. My characters blunder around a lot until they grab hold of the plot. I make continuity errors. (The protagonist of my current NaNo novel has changed hair color twice already.) I write a lot of redundant, awkward crap. But at the end of the month if all goes well, I have a complete novel draft to work with. I cannot revise a novel that exists only in my head.\u00a0I’d love to know what part of this NaNoWriMo detractors have a problem with.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

My first NaNo novel wasn\u2019t good even after I revised it substantially. My next few efforts weren\u2019t great either. But I studied craft books and sought feedback.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

And my sixth NaNo novel, Blood Tide<\/i>, had strong enough bones that after a Pitch Wars mentorship, a title change to Tidepool<\/em>, and several revisions, it found a home with a publisher<\/a>. Do you think I wasted my time? My writeup in Publisher\u2019s Marketplace<\/a> says Nuts to you<\/i>.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

2. \u201cI think it\u2019s just terrible<\/i> that only people who get to\u00a0<\/span>50,000 words are called winners! You\u2019re not a loser just because you didn\u2019t meet someone else\u2019s arbitrary goal.\u201d<\/b><\/p>\n

Absolutely\u00a0right! And\u00a0nobody<\/em> involved with NaNoWriMo would say otherwise. In 2017 I got deathly ill from the flu in November and didn\u2019t come close to writing 50K words. And yet\u00a0I didn’t get taunting emails from NaNoWriMo organizers asking me how it felt to be such a pathetic failure. They congratulated me on\u00a0how far I got and encouraged me not to give up just because the challenge was done for the year.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

No, I didn\u2019t unlock the fun video of the NaNoWriMo staff applauding me, nor did I get any of the winner goodies. But nobody made me feel like a loser either.\u00a0And I took\u00a0what I’d written and finished that\u00a0draft for Camp NaNoWriMo the next year.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

3. \u201cWhy in the world do they hold it in November? That\u2019s already a short month, and with Thanksgiving for Americans and\u00a0the kickoff for the Christmas season, it\u2019s insanely busy!\u201d<\/b><\/p>\n

It sure is, and I believe Chris Baty himself has said that\u2019s exactly why<\/i> he chose November. If you want to be a writer, you\u2019re going to have to learn how to make the time to sit down and write even when life is exploding all around you. I had an appendectomy in the middle of November 2014; I still won NaNoWriMo that year.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

4. \u201c50,000 words isn\u2019t really a novel; it\u2019s too short.\u201d<\/b><\/p>\n

Yeah, that’s\u00a0fair. While a few famous novels really are that short, and 50K is an acceptable word count for some books for younger readers, most YA and adult fiction novels need a higher word count to meet industry guidelines.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

First of all, you don\u2019t have<\/b> to stop at 50K words; some\u00a0NaNoers surpass 100K during the month. I\u2019ve never done that myself, but it\u2019s possible.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

And even if your draft ends up barely over the 50K line, that\u2019s what revisions are for<\/b>. My first drafts tend to be extremely sparse. When I revise, I go in and add tons of description so my characters aren\u2019t just floating heads exchanging dialogue in a blank void. I add backstories. I add necessary info and worldbuilding that I blew past in the thick of NaNoWriMo itself. Tidepool<\/i>, for example, ended up at 76K words, which is well within industry standards for adult horror novels.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

A too-short first draft is something that can be addressed during revisions\u2014but you\u2019ve got to have<\/i> a complete draft first.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

5. \u201cAgents and editors really hate NaNoWriMo because in December they get flooded with terrible 50K-word manuscripts!\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/b><\/p>\n

I\u2019ll grant that the previous arguments had some valid points. This one is just silly and kind of mean, if you ask me. \u201cYou don\u2019t want agents and publishers to think you\u2019re<\/i> stupid like all those other NaNo wannabes, do you<\/i>?\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

NaNoWriMo organizers outright tell you to leave your novel alone for at least a couple of weeks before you start editing, and to never, ever submit your Draft Zero anywhere. I back up my NaNo draft one last time on November 30 and then don\u2019t even look at it until after the new year.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

As for agents and publishers complaining about getting sub-par NaNoWriMo manuscripts, well. That reminds me of the cab drivers I sometimes got in DC who bitched about how much they hated driving in traffic. Getting unpublishable manuscripts in the slush pile strikes me as an occupational hazard for anyone whose job involves receiving manuscripts for review.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

And if someone gets overenthusiastic and wings their NaNoWriMo Draft Zero off to agents and publishers\u2014or slaps it into an eBook and puts it up for sale\u2014on December 1, so what? Then they’re gonna\u00a0get an obviously-needed lesson in not sending their stuff out before it’s been thoroughly revised and truly ready to query.\u00a0It\u2019s a tough business, dude.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Again, I certainly don\u2019t expect everyone to embrace NaNoWriMo the way I have. Writing is an intensely personal thing, and everyone has different methods that work for them.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

But I just don\u2019t get writers who are anti-NaNoWriMo to the point that they want to dissuade other people from even trying<\/i> it. I disagree that it\u2019s no way to learn how to write a novel; it was exactly the way I needed. I took a few tries to write a publishable<\/i> novel, but I\u2019m still in pretty good company. Most writers have at least one or two \u201ctrunked\u201d early efforts in their past.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

So I\u2019m telling you: Pay no attention to the naysayers behind the curtain. If NaNoWriMo sounds intriguing to you, then go for it. You\u2019ve got nothing to lose except your status of \u201cAlways wanted to write a novel, but never has.\u201d \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

(Before I begin, a note: There are any number of writers who don\u2019t like NaNoWriMo because it\u2019s not compatible with…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[42,43,10,5],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/nicolewillson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/915"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/nicolewillson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/nicolewillson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nicolewillson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nicolewillson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=915"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"http:\/\/nicolewillson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/915\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1350,"href":"http:\/\/nicolewillson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/915\/revisions\/1350"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/nicolewillson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=915"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nicolewillson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=915"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nicolewillson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=915"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}