naNOwrimo for me
This year, I’ve kept popping into the NaNoWriMo forums to see how people were going, and to see what the general atmosphere was.
It’s been the first year I’ve actually paid any sort of attention to it, and the first time I’ve put any thought into whether or not I’m likely to take part next year.
After all, 50,000 words or as it’s billed “A novel in a month”. Quite an achievement I’d say[1]
That was, until I spent some time on the boards.
People melting down because they weren’t ‘on target’; had written themselves in a corner; having to start again as it wasn’t as good an idea as first thought or a load of similar reasons.
Towards the end, there were people saying ‘I’ve not used the delete key at all, so I’ve got typos and plot threads hanging all over the place. That’s how I’ve got my word count up’. My personal favourite: “Every so often I’ll just key whatever’s in my head into the manuscripts, stream of consciousness fashion and it usually is nothing to do with it. I’m leaving it in however so that I can include it in my word count.”
I ask these people, especially the ones that artificially boosted the word count to hit the ‘target’: Why. Can you look yourself in the eye and say: “I did it”; or more likely, are you looking at yourself and saying “I didn’t do it, but I found a work around so it looks like I did. I didn’t hit the target so I didn’t succeed at writing.”
Really? REALLY?
In my opinion, word count is not an indicator of story[2] Word count should not dictate the story. The story should come first, whether it needs 2,000; 20,000 or a 200,000 epic. Of course, if you’re writing to a commercial deadline/contract you usually have an idea of the page count/word count required, but then once the story is out, you can then look at additional scenes/plotlines to explore or ones that it could live without to get towards what the publisher is asking for.
I’ve seen the arguments that NaNoWriMo is about pushing you to set and meet a target. 250 words a day is a target, and one that I so far have managed to hit quite well[6] Eventually, I may increase my daily target, or turn it into a weekly target[8] as then I can work more on Fridays and the weekend when I’m not at work to hit it. I didn’t need anything external to decide this. I did find that I’m not the only one however.
I’m also not a competitive person[9], and NaNoWriMo feels to me to be encouraging competitiveness (you get a certificate if you ’win’) between writers, rather than supporting each other generally.
The other thing weighing against NaNoWriMo for me is simple; November see’s both my wedding anniversary, and my birthday, so wrapping myself into NaNowriMo would mean sequestering myself away in the man-cave for most of the month[10] and missing both of those. That’d go down really well….
So yeah, I’m not going to take part in NaNoWriMo.
- It’s not a novel, it’s a first draft. Lot of difference…
- Look at Tolkien’s Lord of The Rings – MASSIVE word count, fairly straightforward story (Summed up perfectly in Clerks 2) with a LOT of padding[3] On the flipside of this, Harry Turtledove’s[4] Southern Victory series – Massive word count per book, but the way it’s written gives quite a tight, detailed and rich story, and that’s just per book. I’ve got the paperbacks of all bar How Few Remain and they take up about 3-4 feet of bookshelf.
- I tend to skip a lot of Lord of the Rings when I read it, especially the Elven poetry and overly bombastic descriptions.
- This man is insanely productive with his writing, there are times where I’d love to meet him to learn, and others when I’d love to meet him to break his fingers[5]
- Usually when I’m having a none productive writing session and the little jealous monster is coming out.
- Well, apart from Monday night[ when Heather gave me an early xmas present of the Transformers video game.[7] But then, that’s why the target is for 250 words/day 6 days a week
- Because Giant Transforming Robots. That’s why.
- Which is effectively 1,500 words per week at the moment
- Take a look at my other blog for more about that
- I guarantee I’d come out of it at the start of December looking like Gollum, blinking in the daylight, going “Was I supposed to be going to work this month? So that’s why the phone kept ringing!”