#NaNoWriMo - real horror at Halloween

It's Halloween, so it's time to talk about something really scary - this NaNoWriMo business.

(I know - I'm a YA horror writer (for now), and I'm publishing a blog post that's pretty much not even slightly Halloweeny. Sue me.)

First off, I'm going to hold my hands up to something. The day after I published my last post, I was shown up for the doofus I am. I made a somewhat blaze comment about how nothing good ever came of this mad writing contest. I questioned whether anything had actually been published as a result of it. Well, something has been published. Quite a few something's. Some of them are in my house. One of them is the favourite book of one of my daughters. (That last sentence is terrible.)
Here's the link: www.goodreads.com/blog/show/1072-24-books-that-won-nanowrimo

She bloody loves this book.

It came out of #NaNoWriMo! Shows what I know, eh?

When you're blogging, research my friends. Research. A regular feature of this blog is 'don't do things the idiot way, like what I do'...

Back to business.

This Goodreads post shouldn't change your expectations. As always in the world of novel writing, those 24 are a teeny tiny percentage of the amount of books actually written. The odds are still stacked way against you (sorry to be discouraging). Honestly? I still think that the first and ONLY reason you should write is for yourself. Like any art, it should be an expression of yourself. Yes, secondly it should be for others - plenty will ask the question 'Why write if not for it to be read?' I agree with that. You paint a picture, it should be seen. But unless you have done it as an expression of your true self, then what is the point of that work of art? It must be something only you could produce for it to be worthwhile. Attempts to sell that work should come much later, when the writing is done.

An example: me. I've written for a couple of decades now. Fifteen years of them, not one single novel published. It was discouraging, I vowed to give up a million times or so... but I couldn't. Writing is my second life. I have stories I need to see through to the end. There are characters... no, people in those stories, and I want to know how things turn out for them. There's no way of stopping it. I have to know.

And that's the biggest part of why I'm chucking myself to the lions of #NaNoWriMo. There are so many stories, and November gives me an excuse to dive into another one, see how it turns out. It's the curiosity.

There's a box. There's something shiny at the bottom, that's all you can see. There's something rattly in there too. Why not stick your head in, have a look?

One other thing that's tickling me: there's so many other NaNoWrimers out there, pinching their noses and jumping in at the deep end. All of those potential stories, all of those opening lines, all of those furious streams of creation, all of those frustrations, all of those wonderings at where things are going... and everyone supporting each other on Twitter, on the www.nanowrimo.org website, on wherever else they meet... Brilliant.

Look out for them in your local coffee shop. You'll recognise them. They'll be the ones bashing their foreheads against the laptop, hoping the words will just fall out.

Oh, you know in my last post, how I said I was almost definitely probably writing that story about a boy and his strange jigsaws, and how I've been waiting years to write it? Might have almost definitely probably changed my mind.

Never saw that coming.

Laters.

#nanowrimo? Nanonono

It really isn't a good idea.

No matter which way I look at it, no matter how I hold it up to the light and turn it this way and that, I can't see what the point is of #nanowrimo.

If you're here, you probably know what it is. You write 50,000 words in a month (not quite a novel length really, and much more than a novella). That equals 1667 words per day. For someone like me, that's a pretty lofty target to hit. Some days in normal life it happens. Lots of others it doesn't. There's work, there's family life, there's a lot going on in a day and fitting those words in regularly is a tall order.

First off, here's the official website, although at the time of writing it was down. Hopefully they'll get it sorted asap.
https://nanowrimo.org/

And for those who have already decided to throw themselves at this mad challenge, this page has some preparation tips before you leap into the mouth of madness: https://www.nownovel.com/blog/writing-novel-one-month-nanowrimo/

Me? I don't do a lot of preparation work for novels. Most of that happens in my head.

My biggest problem with #nanowrimo has always been this rush to bash out prose at the highest rate possibly. It's quantity over quality.
Yes, you can edit it all later. But surely this is only going to require more editing than a piece of work that you took more time over? And I mean a lot more editing. To me, there's a chance that you could go off on such tangents, or make such spectacular errors, that you could render huge chunks of your writing utter worthless.
And again yes, you can prepare beforehand. You can do lots of preparation if you want. But then, aren't you therefore extending the writing process outside of the month of November, and doesn't that therefore defeat the point?

I'm just saying.

A VERY strong negative is my concern over the possible impact on the book I'm currently writing. I am deep in a world of pigs (do not try to end that sentence any other way). I'm writing about a porker called Polka, who's trying very hard to lead a normal, quiet existence and over the course of a few days finds that life turns into everything but normal and quiet. It's at about the 60,000 word mark. That's a lot. And if something should happen to derail the momentum I've got on this twisty, turny novel... That would be a real pile of swill.

So why risk it? If I'm moaning so much about it, why do it to myself?

There's one big reason why I'm tempted to have a go. There are always stories that never get written. I've got notepads full of hundreds upon hundreds of ideas that burned red hot when they first burst into my mind, but have faded to nothing now. Some stories, though, a select few, they stick with you. Some can hang in there for a long time. I've had a couple in the place that lurked for years, waiting for their chance, but I simply had to give them up. They just weren't going to happen. There's not enough hours, and not enough mes to write them all. I've got two stories like that right now. I'm really keen on them, and they're really keen on me. I'd hate to let them go, but there's a pretty big queue of characters who want their tale told, and no-one likes a queue jumper.

One of those stories (and I've got a strong feeling this is the one I'm going for, although that could change at the last minute (just like I might yet say 'sod this ridiculous idea, am I hell trying to write that many words in a day, it's idiotic and I'll probably lose what remains of my mind')) is about a kid who makes his own jigsaws, but they're far from your average jigsaws (there's far more to it than that, but I'm not giving it all away yet - we will all find out more if I go nanowrimo and if this turns out to be the story I go for). It's an idea that popped up over three years ago, and I was red-hot about it, and I was going to start it straight after A Graveyard Visible was finished (might be wrong about that), and it simply never happened.

I don't expect to finish it within 50,000 words. There's too much story in it for that. I don't even expect to get 50k words in a month to be honest, I'm not delusional. But if I could get a good chunk of this novel written in the space of a month, then maybe it might not die off forever. So, in a way, we're saving stories here. There's characters who'd be lost forever if I didn't give this a chance.

Besides, I always think that it's easy to say something is rubbish when you haven't tried it for yourself.

What a beautiful sight. A fresh notepad, 

waiting for a story.

It still really isn't a good idea.

Laters.

(I will do updates. If I have the time in amongst all of this stupidity.)

BY THE WAY, Halloween is coming up! Very very soon. In fact, depending on when you're reading this, Halloween might be today. Or it was yesterday, or last week, and you still feel Halloweeny. If so, follow this link, buy my YA horror, have a freaky time.

myBook.to/MacPliersKindle