National Novel Writing Month

Being that I fancy myself a writing type--an author, as of this writing, of no repute--I tend to read some other blogs that are heavily slanted toward the writing universe, as well. Never forget, this whole thing started out as a way to keep track of my last work-in-progress and, while I've strayed from my roots vastly (TMI Thursdays, I'm looking lovingly at you...), I am still, at the core, a would-be author bitching about not being published yet (and whining about why no one likes his favorite sports teams...if you remember the original tagline of the blog).

You can imagine, then, my amazement when I came across several writing blogs where the authors of said blogs were surprised by this whole National Novel Writing Month "contest", or NaNoWriMo for short. For those who are (yet) unenlightened, let me boil this down for you: starting on November 1, take an original concept, beat on the keys of your keyboard, crank out 50,000 words revolving around your original concept on or before November 30th. That's it. The novel doesn't have to be complete (for instance, DAW books doesn't consider a book a novel unless it's at least 80,000 words...which is my low-water mark and the goal to which I shoot upon each new project), but it does have to be 50,000 words long.

Sounds nice, right? Well, there's a problem. See, I could finish a 50,000 word novel in a day. Since people are full of themselves, there are plenty of folks who voice concerns along the lines of "How do I know that your software isn't going to steal my beautifully-crafted story that I just vomited onto the screen in less than a month and sell it and make yourself rich off of it?" The answer comes in two parts: One, you're a shitty writer. Two, instead of actually counting the words you wrote, the program converts the words you submit to the counter into some unintelligible garbage. In other words, something like "To be or not to be, that is the question" turns into "Forks must be a difficult place for you to live." This little switcheroo protects the author from having his or her work stolen while validating that they did, actually, get to at least 50,000 words.

My patented method for achieving NaNoWriMo success? Write the word "blah". Copy. Paste. Repeat. Run the word count software until you hit 50,001. Save. Submit. Rub everyone else's noses in the fact that you wrote a 50,000 word novel in about thirty minutes. Post the award on your site. Masturbate over how fucking awesome you are.

Yes, I've done NaNoWriMo two and a half times. Twice, I succeeded in achieving the mystical 50,000 word plateau (actually, one year it was 57,000, another, 65,000). The third year I was doing it, I got to 29,000 words and said to myself, "What the fuck am I doing? I hate this story, I hate the idea that I have to write this shit, and for what? A stupid little picture of a squirrel (or whatever it was) to put on my geocities site? What a waste of time." Instead, I took my time and wrote a very good story filled with likable characters and a compelling plotline that I enjoyed writing. Clearly, NaNoWriMo is not for me, at least not now. If you'll allow me a bit of self-indulgence...NaNoWriMo was beneficial when I wasn't as good a writer. I've matured past that, though. Validation isn't a .pdf of a writing award or a button I can hang on the sidebar of my site. Validation is people telling me that they liked my story, of coming back and reading it again, of maybe getting that coveted writing contract.

I'm not going to do NaNoWriMo ever again. However, I am going to write 50,000 words this month in my current work. This is mostly just a way of forcing me to get my act together, shut down the Civ III for a while, and actually put some meaningful work into my current manuscript. Instead of logging into a site and recording my progress there, I'll do it here (the NaNoWriMo word count bar is pretty fucking fabulous, I will say). And, when I get to 50,000 words, I'll finally tell you what the story is about other than hinting at it being a story set in Ancient Greece.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go masturbate over how fucking awesome I am.