NaNoWriMo

Yup, I’m doing it this year again. I don’t think I’ll get to 50,000 words, but I expect to get a good chunk written even so, and it will help me get into a consistent habit of writing every day. I’m somewhere around 12,000 right now. This isn’t a new work started from scratch — I never do that. I’m adding words to a work already in progress. Technically cheating, but I’m not going to verify my writing at the end so it is okay.

What’s NaNoWriMo you ask? Why, it is National Novel Writing Month. Actually, it should be called International Novel Writing Month because thousands and thousands of people all over the world take it into their heads every year to write a novel of 50,000 words in the month of November, but InNaNoWriMo sounds silly. Okay, more silly.

I usually do this pretty much under the radar, but I decided to come out of the closet on my NaNo habit because of all the hostility to the idea of NaNo I found over in the comments to this thread at Jonathan Lyons’s blog. Look, if I were an agent or an editor, I’d pretty annoyed to get fifteen thousand poorly spelled 50,000 word NaNo novels postmarked December 1 on my doorstep. And it is no secret that some NaNoers can be annoying. But the critics should reconsider. First of all not everyone is even interested in publishing what they write. What’s wrong with writing a 50,000 word novel in a month, just to prove you can? And for someone who does want to get published some day, NaNo is a great tool if you are having trouble getting in the habit of regular writing. Yes of course you are a perfectionist who wants every word to be polished to gemlike perfection. And if at a page or a paragraph a day, you have managed to finish a novel to your satisfaction, then NaNo probably isn’t for you. But if you have worked and reworked your first chapter more times than you could count but never felt able to make that big move to chapter 2, maybe give NaNo a try some time. Your novel can’t be perfect if it isn’t finished.

Here’s a secret: the novel that got me an agent was a NaNo novel. I wrote 50,000 words one year and then finished it up the following November. And no, it wasn’t crap when I was done. Sure, I had to revise, but there is no reason a decent writer can’t write 4 to 5 pages a day of good writing, which is what the NaNo pace is. And my agent doesn’t know this because I saw no reason to tell her. So agents who fear NaNo, relax. The last book you sold at auction may have had its start in those 50,000 words.