… or maybe NaNoNoNoWriMo… or NaNoWriMoNoNo… or NoNaNoWriMoNo… but any way you say it, this post might be controversial to a lot of you, so bear with me and don’t get mad until you hear me out.
For those of you who haven’t caught wind of this yet, it is the ‘National Novel Writing Month’.
Don’t get me wrong, there might be a small percentage of you that benefit from the idea of writing a novel in one month. Maybe you think that doing it with a herd… sorry… a ‘bunch’ of other people will get you fired up enough to finish that great novel you have in your head. I mean, I did it last year. I posted the chapters here on this very blog. I even wrote 10 or 12 of my blogger friends into my murder mystery set in World War Two London. It is being edited right now by my head minion… (If we really want to come up with a way to speed up the writing process, we need a month where editors are hounded to go faster… a NaNoEdMo).
I am not opposed to the idea in general. The thing is… (hi, thing, I haven’t seen you around for a few days)… that when you look more closely at the idea, it is a lot like so many of my ideas. It seems harmless until you actually try to do it in real life.
In the first place, there are a lot of things that don’t end up better if you rush them. Like sex… or cooking a frozen turkey. Just ask yourself what Shakespeare or Hemingway would have said if they were asked to complete their masterpieces sooner than they had originally planned. I imagine it would have sounded a lot like what Michelangelo said to the Pope when he was told to hurry up with the Sistine Chapel. I bet it sounded beautiful in Italian, but I can’t translate it here on my more-or-less-family-friendly blog.
I think the best example I can give to express why this idea is not good for everyone is by comparing it to drinking games. I was an alcoholic when I was a very young teenager. I knew I had a problem when I found myself one day, rather than being in my freshman high school class, wandering through a cemetery after having just finished consuming a twelve pack… at 9:00 AM. So I know a little about drinking, and I rarely do it anymore, thank you for asking. But even I, during those crazy years, knew that drinking games were just stupid. There are only two possible outcomes. You either get drunk too fast or not fast enough. The speed you do it at is the main control you have over many things. Don’t give it up.
We live in a time where everybody is writing the ‘great novel’. We can all self-publish. I know because I did it. I have my series of action/adventure/humor science fiction books. Now, I am the first to admit that my books aren’t great literature. But I took four years to write those four books. Not because I am slow, but because I write only when I feel it, when I have something to say, something worth listening to. And these were just for fun. Someday I will write something that people will talk about, that is important. But when I do, I sure the hell am not going to cram it into any kind of time period.
If writing with a group puts you in front of the keyboard and makes you keep poking at them, I am not judging you. But the simple fact is that after you put all those words down, and people read them, they will be judging you. Because there is a lot to read out there. We are all fighting for a slice of the pie, and that pie is the free time of all the people on this planet.
So go ahead… start a novel… but if you have an idea that you think of as your masterwork, don’t do it for NaNoWriMo. Save it. Work on it when it calls to you. When the words are screaming inside your head to come out. If you try to do your great novel in one month, you will fail, and that will just increase the pressure you put on yourself.
Pouring My Art Out 
Sometimes it just gets those words out when we are too busy doing too many other things by making a commitment to yourself & others. I participated last year & found it got me going.
if it works for you, that’s cool
I decided to participate this year because I’m not working full time, I’m isolated in a small town in Maine and my husband is in school 7 days a week. It’s worked out quite nicely so far and it has really helped push me past some of my self imposed road blocks and procrastination tactics. Now, if I was working 40+ hours per week, this would be extremely difficult and I think I would just end up stringing words together to add more words to the page.
I am glad you are one of those people that will benefit from this.
i’m doing NaNoWriMo. Here the thing, I needed the good old kick in the behind to start this novel wich has been soaring in my head for about … long time. (on my twitter profile I say i’m a professional dreamer). I don’t expect it to be Masterpiece material on 30 November. I will most probably be re-writing the whole thing. But at least I’ve got a skelleton to start from. I know where the story goes etc, etc. Once I have rewritten it. there will still be ediiting and so on… before it hits New York Times bestseller list.
so you are doing it anyway it sounds like
yup. I explained…..
right…
And maybe I’m doing NaNo as an excuse, cause something is bothering me…. It helps keep my mind occupied. 😉
writing will do that… nothing too serious I hope
This is why you are one of my favorites. I will never claim to be a writer or any of that..and FP hah…never gonna happen… I started WP three years ago in seeking support for an addiction that I am still fighting. Two years ago I entered the non recovery world blogsphere smack dab in naopomo…and was overwhelmed although I enjoyed reading.
You cant rush things that aren’t meant to happen ever, or just yet.
I am glad people are discussing this
Yes, so am I.
me too
I’m on it! I’m a terrible head minion/editor!
that isn’t where I was going with that at all… it just flowed in my stream of consciousness
Yeah but I’m still terrible.
You are fantastic.
ha
You are soooooo nice… not like that Art chap!
ha
Ha! Schmack!
sigh
Sigh? Sigh? I say schmack yo!
I am running out of things to say back to that to be honest
well…
boooo….
hey now
And that’s precisely why I don’t participate.
You can still write a novel if you want to
I have one I’m (kinda)workin on now.
well hurry up… ha… see what I did there?
The squirrel cartoon is progressing…thanks for the creative prompt. Wrote a mystery novel way back when. Looked at it this summer and noticed a great swath of it was Boring*sigh*. Suddenly thought of two solutions to that problem, but it was late at night; did not write it down and now…phffft – gone.
Can you tell that I have been working on squirrel drawings and accidentally drank real coffee instead of decaf? The squirrels have been brain storming…ad infinitum
Ha… once you let the squirrels into your brain…
You’ll be entertained!
well… yeah… I will… but will you?
They are in your mind…not mine.
yeah… for now…
hehehehehehe….
yup
Some of my friends are doing that project. I’m always working on a novel but they take me a long time. I worked on one for 20 years, trying to get it right.
I am exactly like that,
I’m with you Art. I love the concept of NaNoWriMo but for me it only works when you can put certain aspects of your life on hold. If I could book an entire month off from my day job (and not worry about cooking, cleaning and other chores) then I might have a shot but I would rather not have such a stringent deadline pushing me to write stuff that I would rather take more time and care over. There is always something that comes along to steal your time, even with the best of intentions and carefully planned routine. I’m gently easing myself into novel writing and maybe in the coming years I will explore fast and lose projects within the confines of the NaNoWriMo month but certainly not series projects. I’d rather just spend the month pumping out poetry or song lyrics!
Time is the hardest thing to manage.
Just really sage advice. It really makes me think of the many things we “push” ourselves to do. What is the point? What are we trying to prove? Now, as you said, if it gives us the kick in the butt to just do it, then great. But I would suspect that it could antagonize learned helplessness if we think that because we can’t now, we can’t ever…writing comes with a muse, I believe, and muses are rascals that don’t like being pinned down. “Genius” is not a part of us, but something that blows through our minds when the time is right.
That gives me an idea for another post… oh yeah…
Great post and thanks for sharing your thoughts. I hear ya about choosing our reasons carefully in regards to what motivates us along with deciding what environmental conditions we will set up and work within. Deadlines serve purposes but I don’t find personal value in it being the primary driving force otherwise it will show in the quality or lack thereof.
Deadlines have there place, and I am not knocking them, but I just started typing and that is what came out… maybe if I had given myself more time to think about it… HA!
I agree. For me at least. I tried last year and it gave me writer’s block. But if it helps others, they should go for it. To each his/her own.
exactly
I agree. I tried doing a planned novel for NaNoWriMo two years ago, and it didn’t turn out so well. I’m doing the challenge this year because it’s something I wanted to do, not because doing it with other people will encourage me. I’ve got a finished novel, but I’m trying to get an agent for it.
And there is a month for editing. I think the folks over at NaNoWriMo call it Camp NaNoWriMo. Basically it’s the month you’re supposed to dedicate to editing whatever you concoct this November.
well if I could edit my own stuff, I wouldn’t need anything else… also, I really need an agent… I think I am ready… I have enough stuff, but every time I sit down to write the letter, I draw a blank. I don’t know how to explain my novels in less than a chapter.
Beautifully said, Art. I wanted to write the exact same post, but the words just wouldn’t come to me – maybe we need an anti-NaNoWriMo cheerleading team. I’ve never understood the popularity of NaNoWriMo – sure, freelance writers are constantly forced to meet deadlines, but why impose such a deadline on your own heart’s work? I doubt if Margaret Mitchell could have, or would have, completed Gone With the Wind in a month just to meet some arbitrary deadline, and I suspect it would have been a different novel if she had done so.
It seems geared to just flooding the market with a bunch of throw away titles… thus making it harder to find the few gems… like my murder mystery… beneath the dirt… now I need to do a post about these ‘daily writing prompt’ things and see if I need to do them.
I don’t do the daily prompts, either. I object to someone telling me what I should write (unless, of course, they’re willing to pay me for it), and I hate following the herd. Somehow I manage to come up with enough ideas of my own for posts – some good, some not so good, but at least they’re mine.
I never keep up with my list of new ideas… because… crack squirrels…
The daily prompts are just suggestions in case you’re having a tough time thinking about what to post. You shouldn’t view them as anyone telling you what to write, as much as giving you ideas that might stimulate something to write about. Some of us post daily and sometimes the daily prompt is just what we need.
And do I need to add that pepper header thing and all that?
Not for the WordPress Daily Prompts. All you need to do is link back to the original post with the prompt. If you want to participate in Nano Poblano (aka, NaBloPoMo) as a Team Pepper member, you should just put those tags (“Team Pepper” and “Nano Poblano”) on your post. No need to add the “pepper header” to your post unless you want to. I usually don’t for most of my Nano Poblano posts.
Where does one find the wordpress daily prompts?
They show up in my reader. Maybe because I subscribe to the Daily Post. Here’s a link to the one I got today, which I’m likely not going to respond to:
http://dailypost.wordpress.com/dp_prompt/bad-signal/
I will check it out
I think I will do a post and ask people if this is a good idea for me… sometimes when I do that, we all learn something… like the fact that I suck at deciding what to do next…
Ah, hit a bit of a nerve, did I? I acknowledge that the daily prompts can be helpful – I know you’ve had a number of entertaining posts based on them. Since I don’t post daily [yet], I usually have sufficient time to come up with an idea, even if it means walking around my house looking at ordinary objects (like cotton balls). Every blogger has his or her own way of generating posts, and while Daily Prompts definitely have a place in the blogosphere, they simply don’t appeal to me personally.
Hey, they’re not for everyone. And I know that at the beginning of each month you publish a schedule of what you plan to blog about that month, so I can see why they don’t appeal to you. No nerve hit whatsoever. To each his or her own, right?
Actually, that schedule’s getting to be a pain in the …
Maybe I need prompts for that.
schedule creativity? am I talking to aliens?
I don’t believe you’re one of my followers – you’re missing out on so much! Every month, I publish a teaser of what can be expected that month – but of course, that means I have to actually write the posts I advertise. It’s just a nice little gimmick I came up with that my readers seem to enjoy.
I don’t remember seeing one of those yet
Oh, well, here’s this month’s then: http://cordeliasmomstill.com/2014/11/03/november-naturally/
I try to keep the teasers a little vague, to give me some wiggle room if a post doesn’t work out.
(Of course, Paul’s guest post has already run.)
got it
Ha… half the time I don’t know how the post I am in the middle of typing is going to end up.
I don’t need ideas… I need more followers… the bigger I get, the more chance I have of being picked up by a publisher for my novels and of making revenue from adds on my blog. I need to make enough money to not have to get a another crappy minimum wage job.
We all want that.
no… they’re mine
I do agree. Although I am doing it. I will spend the other 11 months of the year editing the 50,000 words I rushed in NaNoWriMo (Which you might as well not shorten). But I do find it useful to actually get it done. Maybe I just need more self control in the other months ahaha. 😉
Yeah, I am not really as worked up about this as the post made it sound like I am. I’m sure this works for lots of people. Maybe I am just trying to eliminate the competition.
Ahaha I am definitely not competition. My estimated finish date is 15th December.They should just have it every month and then I might get an actual novel done.
The funny thing is that writing is not for everyone, but everyone thinks it is… ooohhh… I need to go tweet that…
Because its soooo true.
yup
Hey, I’m everyone!
yeah you are… HA