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