I’ve never taken part in National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo).
I thought about doing it this year, to have a novella I could use for a podcast or include on my website, but I’m working on other things.
And that’s why I’ve never taken part: I’ve always been working on other things when NaNoWriMo starts.
I’ve had people tell me to drop what I’m working on in late October so that I can take part. When I say, “I’m working on other things, right now,” the good-natured teasing begins. I’ve come to the conclusion that NaNoWriMo is the literary equivalent of smoking — “Come on, all the cool kids are doing it!”
And it is cool; I’m not here to knock NaNoWriMo; however, to explain why some of us don’t take part — and to perhaps help those of you tempted to put something else aside and give NaNoWriMo a go — I’d like to make 5 arguments against participating in NaNoWriMo this year:
50,000 Words Is Not a Novel
I think it’s important to ask yourself what you hope to achieve by taking part in NaNoWriMo. If your goal is to have a novel to sell, 50,000 words isn’t a novel — it’s a start!
If you’re using the challenge as a jump start on a novel, I can think of few things better than being caught up in the excitement of so many people racing toward 50,000 words in a month. Even if you only get half the word count in, you’re putting more effort into one project than most writers in November.
If you’ve never written anything big, NaNoWriMo is a great way to challenge yourself to do more than you’ve ever done before.
But if your goal is to write a full-length novel, it’s best to shoot for 75,000 – 100,000 words (depending what you write), and that’s a hard thing to do in a month’s time (although there are people who do it!).
Is It Worth Stopping Your Current Momentum?
I’ve seen writers step away from other projects to take part in NaNoWriMo. It’s typically more fun to work on something new than something you’ve been plodding away at for some time.
The problem: I’ve seen writers step away from projects to take part in NaNoWriMo only to not finish NaNoWriMo, end up burned out from writing so much, and not get back to what they were steadily working on until sometime in February or March.
If you’re making steady progress on something, I can think of no better way to ruin it by stopping all work on it for a month.
Maybe you need a break and NaNoWriMo will be a fun distraction; maybe you can participate in NaNoWriMo and keep working steadily on your other writing. But if NaNoWriMo is going to get in the way of other writing you need to finish, why not finish that before starting something new?
Are You Doing It To Belong?
Writing is a lonely profession, and NaNoWriMo offers the chance to jump into the open arms of a community there to accept and understand you. (And I think that’s great!) But are you taking part in NaNoWriMo to belong to the group, or to write?
If you’re able to spend time on the NaNoWriMo forums and average 1,667 words a day, you’re a goddess or god of productivity. Even if those 1,667 words aren’t great, you can always clean them up in a second or third draft. If you spend more time talking with others taking part in NaNoWriMo and don’t produce, though, there’s a problem.
The Internet is a wonderful thing, but it can be a big distraction. The Internet is full of people calling themselves writers, but never actually writing.
Again, writing is a lonely act. I spend most of my day alone in a room, so I understand the appeal of being able to chat online like you’d chat with a coworker at a day job — hell, I’ve been guilty of it myself!
But if you spend more time chatting with others about writing than actually writing, you might want to reconsider calling yourself a writer.
Are You Using NaNoWriMo as a Support Group for Your Failure to Produce?
I’ve seen people set out to tackle NaNoWriMo, only to fall behind a week or two in. I’ve seen these people take refuge in knowing they aren’t alone; after all, there are plenty of other people in the same situation, so you really can’t feel too bad that you missed your goal.
That’s an aspect of NaNoWriMo that loses me: you should feel bad when you miss a goal. (Not so bad that you kick yourself to the point of self sabotage, but bad enough that you don’t come up with excuses and let a failure to produce become acceptable.)
If you get behind with NaNoWriMo and have the urge to jump online and chat with others in the same situation — don’t do it! Put your ass in a chair and write, instead!
Surrounding yourself with people who come up with excuses for not writing and saying it’s okay that you didn’t make it only reinforces a very bad habit.
Will Participating in NaNoWriMo Affect Other Responsibilities?
I’m a firm believer that over the course of a week, everybody can find the time to dedicate what comes to an average of an hour a day to write. I believe that if you give your time to others, that they should give to the writers in their lives time so the writer can write. But there are times when work and life should come before writing. (It’s when those times become the norm and you find yourself never writing that it’s an issue.)
Don’t let NaNoWriMo become an excuse to withdraw from responsibilities. Chances are, what you’re writing for NaNoWriMo will go nowhere (that doesn’t mean it’s not worth doing — I think writing for the love of writing should always come before writing for other reasons). But if you have bigger things to take care of and can’t dedicate that much time to NaNoWriMo without sacrificing the things you need to do — chances are — the whole thing will lead to unnecessary stress.
There’s nothing wrong with not being able to take part in NaNoWriMo. If you average 250 – 500 words a day, guess what? you are well on pace to produce a novel or two a year!
It’s like the old fable — you really can win in the long run by being the tortoise…while taking care of work and life responsibilities, too.
* * *
Please don’t take what I’ve written as a slam on NaNoWriMo; I think it’s a great thing and would have really enjoyed taking part in it this year.
I really do think it’s important to ask yourself what you hope to get out of it, though. If you’re just wanting a challenge and some fun, I can think of few things better than NaNoWriMo. But if you need the challenge in order to produce, I think you’re in for some hard times as a writer. Writing isn’t always fun. For me, it’s always satisfying, but not always fun.
Of course, for that reason alone, I understand the appeal of NaNoWriMo. I’ve known people who write steadily all year and take part in NaNoWriMo because it’s the one month of the year that writing seems bigger to them than constantly getting 500 words out a day, no matter what…all year round.
If you plan to jump into the month of madness, I hope this post I wrote last year will help you stay focused in the mad dash toward 50,000 words.
Good luck to everybody writing in November, no matter your pace. Regardless of whether you take the approach of the tortoise or the hare in the writing race, what really matters is crossing the finish line and, after catching your breath, having something you’re mighty damn proud of in the end!
Honestly, I’m kind of glad you don’t take part in it. You’re already so busy year-round writing and working on similar projects, that you really don’t need a month-0′-craziness. Not to mention, November starts to be that really fun time of year for me, and to think of you cramming even MORE writing in for a whole month while I wait even longer for you to have free time to be with me… ehh…. doesn’t sound so fun to me 🙂
(that said, for anyone who didn’t understand the above: I’m very patient and supportive, and give Christopher lots of time to write and work on things. He already spends his whole year working on writing and projects, so he honestly doesn’t need NaNoWriMo)
Geez! If you’re going to question why all the kids are jumping off the roof – fine! A change or challenge is good. Run a marathon (even if you don’t finish)! Do NaNoWriMo (or talk to your uncle Bert)! Just, JUMP!
Tomasz,
I agree that a challenge is good. Last year, I wrote about preparing for NaNoWriMo. Every year, I chat with people taking part. Most don’t make it, and that’s fine–like you said, “Run a marathon (even if you don’t finish).”
But I also like giving reasons why somebody running an ultramarathon might want to consider skipping the marathon.
There are good reasons for not taking part in NaNoWriMo. Every year, I see people who are teased for not taking part, and I thought, “Hey, it’s that time of the year and I don’t see many things written for those not taking part. Why not write an entry for them because you don’t see too many entries written about why a person might want to reconsider NaNoWriMo.”
So I have one entry saying, “Have fun, and here are some tips for your journey,” and one saying, “Stay the course if you write every day and if you’re taking part, ask what you hope to gain by jumping in.”
I do think there are many great things about NaNoWriMo. I think it’s a great way to kick off a new draft of an actual novel-length project, and as I mentioned, one of the best ways for somebody who doesn’t know how much they can write to find out.
But I’ve also seen a lot of people put things aside for NaNoWriMo because it is nice to not feel so alone for a month, only to end up feeling like they let themselves down and found it very hard to get back to the things they were writing before they took the leap.
Cynthia,
Yeah, I like November, too. Up north, it was September and October, but in Texas–we don’t get the weather I like until November. That, and I really enjoy spending a lot of time with family around Thanksgiving.
To me, it really doesn’t matter if somebody takes the route of the tortoise or the hare as long as they’re writing. It’s just that in recent years, I’ve seen a lot of tortoises getting knocked for not taking part, so I thought I’d write something for them.
I’m always working on something else when November comes around, and that does make participating in NaNoWriMo something of a problem. I’m not going to argue that dropping what you’re in the middle of is a good idea, but I always do it anyway. My ideal scenario is to use November 1 as a deadline to hurry up and finish whatever I’m already writing, and while that would be a lovely scenario, it never works out.
I do need to argue that a couple of your other points don’t reflect the experience I’ve had with NaNo. My experience may be outside the norm, especially because I’m lucky enough to be a member of a very active region that has in-person write-ins scheduled every day of the month and a strong culture of support.
For me, NaNo is partly about being social and belonging to a group, but that motivation isn’t in opposition to writing. Our write-ins are a lot of fun, but they also lead to many words being written, and plenty of people find they get more done at write-ins than at home (though of course others prefer to write in solitary). Through NaNo, I’ve made tons of writing friends who I never would have met otherwise, and we end up supporting each other in writing year-round.
I don’t know how it is in other regions, but I haven’t seen people encouraging each other to make excuses to fail. Among my NaNo buddies, the goal is always to drag each other to the 50k finish line. And when someone really isn’t able to write that much, we tell them to keep writing and end the month with as many words as possible rather than giving up partway through. (One of the secrets of NaNoWriMo is that it’s not really about 50,000 words, it’s about more words than you normally write.)
You have some good reasons for not participating, and it doesn’t make any sense to do it if you’re not excited about it, so I won’t try to talk you into it… this year. But I hope you don’t have the wrong idea about what the challenge is like and that you’ll consider participating in the future when the timing feels more right for you.
Lisa,
I do think NaNoWriMo is a great thing. Every year it comes around and I don’t participate, though, I get teased for not taking part, so I thought I’d write an entry about reasons a person may not be taking part, and giving something to consider to those considering putting things aside because they’re caught up in the buzz of it all.
Again, it’s a very cool thing–I know there are some professional writers who took part and it led to great things. I know that the sense of community and support is wonderful; like I said, I sit in an office–alone–all day long, so I can totally see the benefit of that support.
It just hit me as people were asking me, “What’s your excuse for not taking part this year that there might be others in a similar situation who might like a different point of view on NaNoWriMo.
No sooner than I posted did I get e-mail from somebody saying, “Thanks for posting that…I was seriously considering putting some things aside to take part in NaNoWriMo, but I’m producing regularly and not willing to stop what I’m doing right now, even though I was tempted.”
That’s one type of person I wrote this entry for.
I used you as an example of somebody who’s benefited from NaNoWriMo because I always appreciate your support, and I know you’ve enjoyed NaNoWriMo in the past. I think it’s very cool that this year, you’re using it not to write a complete short novel, but as a way to charge into the first draft of your next novel.
If I were about to begin my next novel and not looking at a heavy workload in November, I’d consider doing the same. I don’t know if a November will ever roll along where I’m cleared to take part in NaNoWriMo, but I’d love using it to write a 50,000+ word story to be used as a podcast or e-book someday.
The main point I wanted to make with my post was it doesn’t matter if somebody’s a tortoise or a hare–what matters is crossing the finish line. I wish everybody–whether taking part in NaNoWriMo or not–only the best with their writing in November!