Chronicles of a Procrastinating Novelist Volume 18: On Merits and Drawbacks of #NaNoWriMo
It’s November, and to the glut of aspiring novelists in the universe, that means National Novel Writing Month is upon us. It’s the dragon in the doorway whom some of us welcome as an opportunity to finally break our procrastinatory habits of the past year and buckle down and write that book. Others of us view with vague dread as failure to meet that towering 50,000 word count can be a ticket straight to Neuroses-ville with a guilt hangover that can last straight until next year rolls around. For a procrastinating novelist such as myself, it’s a magnificent opportunity to hold myself accountable. Meet the deadline. Make that word count. I view it neither as nemesis or pinnacle of my authorial productivity. Perhaps because I developed my process before ever attempting NaNo, I can view it with relative detachment. After dabbling with it the last five years, I’ve concluded that NaNoWriMo is a great tool, but it is not and should not be one’s only means of getting a novel on paper.
I finished my first novel before I’d ever heard of NaNoWriMo. I wrote it in five hundred word spurts during the four years of my undergraduate career, then finished the sucker in a three month binge after graduation. Without an imposed deadline, I learned a lot about myself regarding my personal work ethic. How prone was I to writer’s block? How willing was I to indulge in using said block as an excuse not to write? How prone was I to insecurity? How willing was I to take up the myriad of excuses that present themselves to avoid writing? Would I do chores, go visit a long-lost friend, read a book, watch a TV show, work overtime, cross-stich, rather than write my book? How much did the writing matter to me? Did I really want it enough to find coping mechanisms for the blocks and insecurities? I’m not saying I wasn’t riddled with said insecurity or that blocks didn’t occur frequently and maddeningly. But that space where I had to make a deliberate decision about choosing to write every day instead of being compelled to by an outside motivator were important.
An important caveat of my NaNoWriMo participation is that I’ve never officially enrolled. I’ve participated, kept daily word counts, tweeted them, and produced buckets of material in the four (now five) years that I’ve attempted it, but I’ve never gone through the website officially and joined the actual contest the way one is supposed to. I’ve participated four times, and only once did I stick to one novel. The other times I wrote short fiction, toyed with writing exercises, and wrote the exposition to various novel ideas with which I’d been playing. My point is that I’ve allowed myself a lot of freedom within that 50,000 word goal because I already know that I’m capable of finishing a book. I’d already finished three before I’d ever set a toenail near the social media juggernaut this contest has become.
I can’t speak for people for whom NaNo made the difference between having a completed manuscript or not in their writing career, but for me, the contest is less about finally finishing that book, than jumpstarting a consistent writing habit. You get to feel what it’s like to produce regularly instead of in tiny spurts over a ten year period. You realize just how little actual narrative fits into the only 1,600 words daily. It’s a crash course in the fact that writing a novel is hard. Just getting words on paper consistently is hard, let alone everything else that eventually goes into the process. Word vomiting a 50,000 word draft is the tip of very intimidating ice-berg, but it’s also one of the hardest and most rewarding parts of the novel writing process. I encourage anyone who wants to try NaNoWriMo to do so, and can vouch for its ability to produce material with which to work. But I’d caution anyone who hangs the fate of their career or mental faith in a project on the ability to keep up with NaNo’s grueling pace. People have been writing novels for centuries. NaNoWriMo’s been around since 1999. For me, it’s an unmissable opportunity to get a lot of work done. But it’s not, nor should it be, the only way to create one’s story.
Thank you for reading,
B
P.S. You can bet your butt I’m counting this in today’s word count.
