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Ramblings

lextenou

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NaNoWriMo: In Which I Pull No Punches

[Nov. 19th, 2009|02:02 pm]

[	mood	\|	disappointed	]
[	music	\|	"The Chauffeur (Martin Preston Remix)" - Sleepthief feat. Kirsty Hawkshaw	]

I don't like NaNoWriMo.

I have a lot of things that make me the Crotchety Old One amongst my friends - or at least, the Opinionated Asshole - but this is one of those things that I cannot and have never been able to support.

It's never really been something that I thought about, from the time when I first heard about it. Writing a 50,000 word story in a month? Bah. Stupidly easy. I've never done it. I've written reams of paper about myriad subjects through the thirteen years I've been writing, more than enough to fill bookshelves. It's not all been worthy of showing to anyone, or even being re-read by me, yet I keep it.

Writing is more than stringing together words. It is, dependent on your genre and oeuvre, something you do for fun, something you do for profit, something you do because you can't imagine you doing anything else. It is not an arbitrary set of goals - I will write X number of words per day or I AM A FAILURE. No. It doesn't work like that.

The creative experience is so much more than simply sitting down and putting words to paper. It's a creation of worlds, of universes that no one else has ever thought of, that no one has ever conceived. You, a writer, are a creator, bringing an idea from your mind to full, rich life.

It is possible to sit and write a novel in thirty days. It's possible to write a novel in two weeks. It's possible to write a novel three days. The inherent problem, and why I cannot bring myself to compromise my standards to join, is the issue of quality.

No writer who takes writing seriously can ever seriously write something, look at it, and be completely happy with it for the rest of their life. It may be as simple as verb tense agreement, or a closing of a spare loophole, but there is always something from that first draft that isn't quite right. Maybe your lead was too intelligible. Any written work that is written and left alone after that first touch of pen to paper is unfinished. It will always remain unfinished, even if the person who wrote it funds a run of fifty copies to give to friends and family.

Books are an inherent joy in life, a bringing together of form and function that transports we, the mere reader, to an experience we would never have achieved in our day to day life. Books are also subject to editors and re-writings. I've seen what happens to manuscripts of books in bookstores right now with the words "Bestseller" emblazoned on the cover in embossed block letters.

Authors making six figures per annum get more red scrawled over their polished manuscripts than the black of their written words.

I've stood at a podium and read my written creation to a captive audience. I've been profiled in local papers. I can put "Published Author" on my resume and know that I paid zero money to get my work published. I've signed non-disclosure agreements related to my work. I've had people tell me consistently to get my work published, to which I give a small smile and discuss a different topic.

I've had to sell myself. No amount of hot water washes off that stench. My soul was scarred by seeing people hold my work in their hands and put it back down, uninterested as they spoke to me face to face. I've been attacked, in a public place, for having the temerity to write what I did, to say those words.

I'm not simply a hack who can't cut it. I write because I must write. I put my words down because they must be inscribed, not for others to read, but because they must exist.

I do not write for deadlines, I do not write for other's pleasure. I write because the story must be told.

NaNoWriMo is akin to writing workshops or conventions. Writing is an incredibly isolating act. You are interacting with your pen and paper or your keyboard - not other people - as you jot down your story. No number of seminars entitled "Get Your Work Published!" will get you published. Writers are selfish and self-centered people by definition - you spend so much time in your own head that you can't help but to forget to notice those around you.

The best writers, hands down, are avid and voracious readers.

Ultimately, all that NaNoWriMo does is encourage a lot of people to inflict upon the general public a lot of drivel that shouldn't be posted. By no means am I dismissing all works, as I haven't read them all. No, what I dismiss is the mere idea of being only able to write a novel during this month, and having that be it. Every 1500 to 1600 words should not bear the line "end of day". If you write a novel in a month, it should be because that is how that novel wanted to be written.

I have a friend who is a midwife. She has a saying regarding children arriving in this world - they decide their birthdays. His due date was yesterday? Oh, well, he didn't want that to be his birthday.

A novel is at its core, personal and precious, no matter how many you write. Having your work eviscerated will never feel good - you thought you were better than that.

Most writers deserve to starve. Especially those who populate bestseller lists.

Arbitrary rules can never denote what the right time is for writing a book. Each book has it's own time, and you writing it will take as much time as you need. Holding yourself to anyone's schedule other than your own is farcical. There is a joy in immersing yourself in your own created world and churning out thirty pages in a day, and then dwelling in that world for a week as you tinker with something else before returning to the other story and delving into another fifteen pages.

Every writer is different. They have to be. No one person can decide for everyone what they will do - just look at your average spread of responses to writing challenges to see my point.

The single thing that it takes to be a writer, more than anything else, is practice. Practice until your hand falls off, then use the bloody stump to continue writing. I did not choose to be a writer - the words have chosen me and not jotting them down makes the blood soaked wall in my basement pulse with an unholy insistence. Anything and everything else for writers is a crock. A pen and a blank journal are all you need, not a designated month to write the average 50,000 words.

Your story doesn't always meet those standards. Who is to tell you that your novel must be that length? The rules? Where did you ever get by following those rules, stifling your creativity into the same tiny little boxes that give us Meyer and Brown.

You, as a writer, have a duty to yourself to write the best thing you are capable of...and if you are not satisfied with what you've written, why are you inflicting it on the world? You do irreparable harm to yourself, to your integrity and honor by putting out subpar work. You're better than that, NaNoWriMo constituents. You can write better than that and you know it.

If you let the magic made up number determine your story length, we'd never have Lord of the Rings or anything by Proust. Remember those? Magical how it's suddenly a "trilogy" when it's actually supposed to be one book.

Ultimately, I know I am tilting at windmills. I still cannot elucidate the disappointment I see anytime I am conversing with someone and see them, proudly, bearing a badge denoting their participation.

Just because you're developmentally stunted in your writing ability, you do not have to advertise that fact to the rest of the world.

I cannot find NaNoWriMo to be anything more than masturbatory. I'm not that kind of exhibitionist. I'm this kind.

[This post was written without being re-read or edited in any way including spellcheck, in the tradition of NaNoWriMo. Apologies for expressing views are strictly forbidden, as I am not going to wake up dead tomorrow morning for speaking against the totalitarian regime. The only writer to whom I specifically refer to in this diatribe is an in-law to whom I have no internet ties and wouldn't recognize good writing if it humped her leg and told her it was a blubber reduction device.]

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