NaNoWriMo (I pronounce it “NaNo-Rye-Mo” as opposed to the “NaNo-Ree-Mo” some WriMos prefer. After all, I’m a writer, not a wreeter…Though I am a reader…hmm…), aka National Novel Writing Month, starts on November 1st. Soon I will spending my days in writing bliss, tapping out my daily word-count and posting victory cries like: “I just hit 10k!” on my Twitter and Facebook status updates. This is my fourth year participating in NaNoWriMo, and I’m planning on it being my third year in a row beating that 50k word goal. In fact, I made it to almost 55k last year, so this year’s personal goal is 60,000. That’ll mean 2k words per day as opposed to the minimum of 1,667 to reach the 50k goal. A bit more of a challenge, sure, but I like the more even number better, anyway. Besides, it’s only 333 more words per day (333…is that bad luck?).
Every year, people ask me why. Why do I spend every November writing feverishly to reach 50,000 words in 30 days? It’s crazy, and you don’t actually win anything, so what’s the point? Writers and non writers alike think I’m crazy. I think I’m crazy. My MacBook James thinks I’m crazy. By the end of the month, I’m humming Queen’s “I’m Going Slightly Mad” and seeing word counts in my sleep. So: Why?
Why not?
I love to write, and I love a challenge. NaNoWriMo is a writing challenge. Two things I love in one package. Can it get any better? And the truth is, I do get something out of it. I don’t win a prize (aside from the little web badges that say “Winner!”), but I do get to say: “I can do it! I can set a goal to write a crazy number of words in a comparatively short number of days, then kick that goal to the moon!”
(Luckily, November is nicer to me than Lucy is to Charlie Brown)
I also participate in NaNoWriMo to kick off a winter writing habit. Over the summer, things get in the way and my goal to write every day gets lost in sunny weather. November gets me back into writing daily, and leaves me feeling lost when it’s over and I no longer HAVE to write, but I NEED to write. Generally, that drive to keep on typing lasts until the spring, and I even will continue to needlessly post my word-count into the middle of December. Crazy? Perhaps, but also productive.
Another reason to NaNo: You are supposed to start something new on November 1st and keep working on it until November 30th. (Actually, you’re supposed to have a completed rough draft by the 30th: A goal that has eluded me for the past three years.) This provides consistency for writers such as myself who sometimes have so many pieces going on at once that they want to write in them all and manuscript hop two or three times per month just to add a few pages to each. Then there’s the fact that all of my past NaNo pieces are the beginnings of potentially awesome novels. I’ve really gotten to know those characters through total immersion, the plot it almost complete in my head and half done on the page (well, screen), and I’m always happy to re-visit them when I’m manuscript-hopping later in the year, and sometimes can stick with them for a month or more at a time.
Of course, there are a few down sides to NaNoWriMo. An anti-wrimo will tell you that NaNoWriMo concentrates on quantity over quality because it discourages its participants from editing as they go (something I do anyway, after failing–pretty much quitting–my first attempt at NaNo because I couldn’t stand leaving the little bits I didn’t like behind despite the fact that I knew how I wanted to fix them). They might also point out that there are no judges, so how can anyone win? The word-count bot can’t read, and people can scramble their manuscripts, so what’s to stop them from typing “I’m going to win,” over and over until they hit 50k? To those questions I say this: There may be a few cheaters out there who get halfway through the month and decide to just copy and paste over and over to get to the 50k words, but the point in participating in NaNoWriMo is to challenge yourself, so it only hurts the individual. I think that the fact that anyone can win–even if they aren’t amazing writers–is a positive NaNoWriMo trait because it encourages people to try. As far as quantity over quality is concerned: That, my dear skeptics, is what editing is for.
The only thing about NaNo that I see as a major down-side is the fact that you really have to type your manuscript in order to fully participate. Hand-writing is an option, but it isn’t easy, because you have to count your words by hand, have someone else check them, and then type “I am going to win” (or something of that nature) over and over until it matches your word count so you can verify it at the end of the month and be declared a winner. As someone who generally prefers to hand write, but wants to know her exact word count every 15 minutes to an hour, this is a major slow-down in the process, so I end up chained to my laptop and unable to bring my writing with me to work. Of course, that means the manuscript is already entered into the computer and ready for printing and red-penning, but I prefer my rough drafts to be hand-written.
Those minor flaws aside (and I only see the last one as a flaw, anyway), NaNoWriMo is an excellent challenge for any writer. I love doing it, and every year I try to get my writing friends to join me so we can compete against one another with our daily word counts and writing sprints. If you think you’re interested, check out the NaNoWriMo website at http://www.nanowrimo.org or take a look at my NaNo profile here. On the first, you will see my NaNoWriMo word count tracker appear in the upper right corner of my blog, and I will be posting my victory word-counts and other NaNo insanities in blogs categorized as “NaNoWriMo” all November long (Though I do hope to post a few more regular blogs during the month, as well, if time allows). Feel free to cheer me on or heckle me!
Happy writing!
Ink on My Hands 