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| Happy National Novel Writing Month! |
Thirty days and nights of literary abandon. The key is quantity over quality. Don’t stop, don’t look back, don’t revise. Revision is for December. Focus, instead, on pounding out an average of 1,667 words per day. Get a first draft done. People who make the 50K-goal “win.” Their prize: the manuscript itself “and the exhilarating feeling of setting an ambitious creative goal and nailing it,” says the NaNoWriMo website.
“Due to the go-go-go structure of the event, the stultifying pressure to write brilliant, eternal prose had been lifted,” NaNoWriMo’s website assures me... “in its place is the pleasure of learning by doing, of taking risks, of making messes, of following ideas just to see where they lead.”
Taking risks, making messes, and seeing where they lead?...sign me up!!
I know several people (from LibriVox) who've been participating in this for the past 3 years. A couple of them don't work so they REALLY have a lot of time to spend writing. Basically, you're putting pressure on yourself.
ReplyDeleteI just met someone on Polyvore who's been participating since it started. I told her I don't expect to see any new sets from her until after December. :P
Oh to be rich and idle...I tried it once and hated it.
ReplyDeleteI don't think all of them are rich. They just don't have jobs. :P
ReplyDeleteBetter yet, DON'T write that novel
ReplyDeletehttp://www.salon.com/books/writing/index.html?story=/books/laura_miller/2010/11/02/nanowrimo
Very good points made in the above article. The vast majority of articles I have had published have been nonfiction. Even the small bit of fiction I was lucky to see published (one short story and 2 poems) were in what are referred to as 'little' or literary magazines with a very small audience.
ReplyDeleteI've also reviewed books for a daily newspaper and several magazines and quite a few were by writers who ended up on the bestseller list. The worst was having to review a Danielle Steele book. I told the editor that I'd never read one of her books and was concerned about whether I would know if this was one of her 'good' ones, etc. He shrugged it off and told me not to worry about it. I wrote the most tepid review I'd ever written. Too many factors contribute to a writer being on bestseller lists so Steele having been on some meant nothing. I enjoy some 'guilty pleasure' reading as much as the next person but some people are simply not worth my valuable reading time.
OK, I'll get off my soap box now... :P
Edited and re-posted due to an error. I do revise. Honestly...
What I like about NoNoWriMo...is the unabashed frenzy of writing without rules. It's like "Girls Gone Wild" for us writers AND readers. Grammarians and prudes need not apply.
ReplyDeleteThat's where revision comes in. And it's always been the most important part of writing. Worry about the spelling and grammar later...
ReplyDelete