I was
one of 315,904 participants in National Novel Writing Month or
Nanowrimo. The basic goal of the month
is to generate a first draft of a story consisting of 50,000 words or more
(roughly 1667 words a day). It can be a
grueling marathon, one that drains your mental facilities as you try to figure
out what to do next with your work. I
have done it the last two years and somehow come out victorious both
times. It’s not easy, so here are a few
things I’ve learned that hopefully aspiring writers can consider getting ready
during the next 11 months.
1.
You Will Exhaust Your Initial Ideas Early, and That’s Okay.
Going in you may think you have
all of the ideas for your novel knocking around in your head and all you have
to do is put it to paper. When I did
Nanowrimo last year I had been thinking of my story idea for the prior two and
a half years. Before I sound like I was super
prepared, I didn’t get that far. In fact
I hit the wall hard sometime around the end of week two both years. That’s okay.
Even a 200-300 page novel is going to have more than you can keep going
in your brain at the same time.
Don’t let that discourage you. Getting those ideas out is good because it will
make room for new ideas. After you write
everything you can think of think about what happens next and how to connect
them all, and it’ll help strengthen your writing. No writer has every single idea ready to go
on the outset. Some ideas will only come
out during the writing process.
2. Embrace Your Inner Swooper
When I try to write, it’s hard
not to feel a little like Nicolas Cage’s Charlie Kaufman in the movie
Adaptation. There are so many options
with writing a story it can be easy to get overwhelmed and constantly
criticizing yourself for not writing the great American novel. Countless stories never get told because the
writer can’t get beyond these insecurities.
Following the Kurt Vonnegut model of swoopers (those who write
prolifically and edit later) and bashers (those who write and scrutinize all
the way), I’m a basher through and through, and I have to imagine a lot of
Nanowrimo participants are bashers as well.
But to win Nanowrimo, I had to try to think like a swooper.
So it makes sense that one of
the things Nanowrimo encourages is to allow its participants to give themselves
permission to write crap. This may seem
counterintuitive: why bother putting in all this effort into a subpar
product? However, letting the bad ideas
flow allows all ideas to flow. Nanowrimo
is all about getting in motion all the people who keep saying they’re going to
write, but never get around to putting those ideas out because they get hung up
on it not being a complete novel the first time out. With editing, no one has to know about the
cheesy dialogue, scenes that go nowhere and characters who don’t add anything. How I got to the ideas isn’t necessarily
important to the reader.
3.
Having a Plan Is
Helpful, but Always Leave Room for Improvisation
During Nanowrimo I met
someone. Her name is Charlotte. She’s about my age, British with long black
hair. She knows how to use a sword and is
a little hyperactive. She also was
barely in any of my outlines for my story up until I started writing this
year’s Nanowrimo. One of the joys of
writing is discovery; stumbling upon some idea that you never would have
thought of before you started writing.
George R.R. Martin has a quote attributed to him classifying writers as
being either architects (ones who intricately plan every small detail) or
gardeners (ones who plant a seed and see what happens). It’s similar to the “swoopers and bashers”. Of course a good novel will need structure
with its story, character arcs and plot progression, but as I wrote I needed to
allow myself the freedom to explore and take risks because I could find
something better than what I originally set out to do.
4.
Being Open to New Sources Helps
It’s a logical conclusion to
want to avoid consuming other stories during Nanowrimo out of fear of being too
influenced by whatever you’re reading.
Certainly spending more time writing will limit the amount of time you have
to read, watch TV and consume stories anyway, but writing in a vacuum is
generally a bad idea. Aside from maybe
ancient cave paintings, art is influenced somehow by other art. The best way to combat being too influenced
by other work is to consume a lot of different types of work. Read high fantasy, true life stories, beach
read murder mysteries, classics, graphic novels and read with an eye as to how
things function in the work and how you can figure out what works in your
writing. To be honest I didn’t read a
whole lot going into last year’s Nanowrimo.
However in 2013 I vowed to be different and I’ve read a lot, from
several Vonnegut novels to Neil Gaiman to graphic novels like Fables. All writers read and it’ll make your work
richer the more you can fit in.
5.
Writing 50,000 Words and Being a Winner Are Not Mutually Exclusive
Technically speaking, if you
write 50,000 words you won NaNoWriMo. It
is a huge achievement to generate that much over only a month. However, sometimes people take shortcuts to
get to that magical number that may cheapen the victory. There is a thread
in the Nanowrimo forum all about tricks and cheats participants can use to
boost their word counts. To be fair, there
are tips that can be helpful, like writing in a character’s backstory or
writing out your thought process as you work out elements in your story. Then you get tricks like not using
contractions, always referring to characters by their full names or having
characters repeat things for characters who are, for no practical reason in the
story, hard of hearing. For those who
use these tricks I have to ask: what are you really getting out of it? Are these things making your writing or your
work ethic regarding writing any better?
These tricks will be the first things cut from any revision you make, so
why even bother putting it in in the first place? Sure, there are instances where it makes
sense not to use contractions or have characters repeat themselves, but if you
have unnatural sounding dialogue spoken by a bunch of Jimmy Two Times, who is
going to want to bother slogging through that?
Unless you’re doing it for a school assignment, these cheats can’t be
truly helpful.
It’s a bit like Rocky (or for
a more contemporary version, the Late Night trilogy episodes of Louie). Where (SPOILER) both Rocky and Louie don’t
get what they want, yet both end on notes of triumph because they gave it
everything they had, and really, doing everything you can is the only way to
combat regret.
6.
The End of
November Is Just the Beginning
Some people hate
Nanowrimo. Like really hate it. I can see why, with publishers complaining
about December submissions clogging up their inboxes written by at best naïve
and at worst delusional would be authors.
For some, once Nanowrimo’s done they think they can just throw in the
raw word file out to a publisher and think that JK Rowling money is going to roll
in. For people who claim that they love
writing, they aren’t really applying themselves.
As much as Nanowrimo
emphasizes revising and editing, it’s hard to ignore that some of the sponsors
of Nanowrimo are enabling the idea that what you wrote in November is a final
draft and is ready to go on December 1st, not to mention Novel
Writing is in the full title (I guess “National First Draft Writing Month” isn’t
as snappy). It’s not that easy. I’ve participated in Nano the last two years
and you know how many people I’ve had look at my two drafts: nobody. It’s not even close to being ready for anyone
but me. There’s still characters and
story points that need clarifying and it needs to be put together into some
cohesive whole. There’s a lot of work
ahead of me, but I think I’m closer to it than I was before Nanowrimo 2012.
Yes, there have been novels
started in Nanowrimo that have been best sellers like Water for Elephants, but
those writers no doubt put in the hours making them coherent novels before they
were ever published. You may be that one
genius out of a million who can churn out a novel fully formed, but odds are
you are not. That type of writer is
generally a creation of the movies (written by people who know better). If you want to work as a writer, you have to
respect and obey the work ethic of a writer.
That means reading a lot and writing a lot. If you want to work as a writer, you need to
treat writing like work.
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