a) It's not possible to write a good novel/50,000 words of one in a month, therefore everything written during that month sucks, and therefore anyone participating is not a real author.
I have to admit, I still find the attitude that only complete amateurs would ever participate in such an activity to be hilarious. I guess this is due to meeting and listening to professional writers who write between 1000-2000 words a day on novels while they're working on them - if not more. Before I even knew that this activity existed, I was reading advice by people like Stephen King who suggested writing 2,000 words a day, every day, if one wished to become a published writer.
I might also find this funny due to the number of published authors I know who, even if they aren't ACTUALLY participating in NaNo, do something similar to it during some point in the year.
b) Creativity doesn't come on command.
I... well, no. But I also don't have enough time in my life to sit around and wait for my brainmeats to be sufficiently not stressed out/depressed/woeisme/distracted that I suddenly become an amazing font of creativity. And the sick, wonderful truth of the matter is that through doing things like NaNoWriMo and Clarion, I've gotten to the point where how I feel about what I'm writing does not actually affect its quality. I've learned that most first readers or critiquers can't tell when I was forcing so hard that every word felt like shoving a nails into my eyes, and when I was just zooming right along on a creativity high.
Now, I would like it if I could live in a magical fiction land o' love where I have nothing to do all day but lounge around and wait for a muse to come find me... no. Okay, that is a damn lie. I would go crazy. But in any case, I don't like waiting around to feel creative because I am one of those writers who does not actually have a "muse." Period. I just have me. And I have a day job, so if I can't time my writing sessions to happen either before or after work, I'm sunk.
Clearly if your fiction requires that you feel creative, NaNoWriMo is totally not going to work for you. Additionally, some people just don't write that quickly. But even if your preferred daily word count is more like 200 than 2000 words, trying to get your goal in every day regardless of how inspired you feel is going to help you in the long run.
There are a lot of people out there who do not participate in NaNo because it does not fit their schedule/writing technique/whatever. That's cool. At the same time, I always find the very small group who has to argue that the whole thing is both stupid and a waste of time to be, fortunately, dead wrong about how writing works for people who are not themselves. That's somewhat more hilarious. Of course, we do live in a culture devoted to ruining everybody else's fun, so I probably shouldn't be surprised.
c) It's offensive to real full-time writers that all these people think they're a "writer" for a month.
Not to be an asshole, but... HAHAHAHAHA. WHAT!?
Shit, I think I just woke up the cat from laughing so hard.
*My favorite argument against NaNo is when people whine that it is ruining their chances of publication by clogging slush piles with badly written novels. Because, honestly, if a novel written in a month sucks that hard, and your novel written in six months isn't polished enough to stand out from a pile of them, well... let's just say I'm not sure you're laying blame in the right place.
I've also been sneered at (to my face and at work, no less) by fellow amateurs who have a serious attitude problem regarding the activity. Granted, no, I do not look like I am SERIOUS BUSINESS about writing while I am at work and wearing my retail work outfit. But then, I've also been SERIOUS BUSINESS about writing for long enough to have my happy daydreams about publication successfully extracted and set aside where they can't get in my way anymore. The first result of this is knowing that the Day Job is not going away any time soon. The second result of this is knowing that I need to stop snarking about people who snark, and get ready for work.
Oh yeah: Still a little behind, but gained some ground back this weekend:
| |
13,841 / 120,000 (11.5%) |
I imagine that I'll just have to be happy with finishing by the end of December, as originally planned. The baseball novel, on the other hand... I don't know. We'll see what happens tonight.
- Mood:
snark - Music:Enigma - Gravity of Love
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jaylake : (no subject) [+3] - steppinrazor : (no subject) [+2]
- renatus : (no subject) [+2]
- (Anonymous) : Creativity [+1]
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Comments
Dear world,
Please put your big boy pants on and stop crying.
Love,
Me.
But then, I wonder the exact same thing about people who campaign against gay rights.
Too many people without enough joys of their own, determined to bash the joys of others.
I mean, I just laugh, but at the same time, I really wonder how many of them think that it's the first time I've heard that argument from somebody who doesn't know what they're talking about.
Oh, well, fuck this then!
When I am *not writing* it is very difficult to begin writing. (It's the inertia of the day job and family and the whole laundry list of excuses.) When I am writing, though, it opens the floodgates. The more I write, the more I want to write. The ideas tumble over each other in their impatience to be written.
In addition, while 90% of it is probably going to need some extensive editing and rewriting, 10% of it is unaccountably good. It sneaks in there, diamonds among the crap.
The elitism of this perspective cracks me up. Were these critics not struggling beginning writers once too, with day jobs and piles of rejection slips? Or did they spring into existence fully formed as professional fiction authors?
And - hi! From one NaNoWriMo author to another. Keep writing! :)
Jeri
http://smugpuppies.com
This is actually why I have not updated my webcomic as promised. I need to work on it. D:
But yeah, it seems to be an attitude primarily held by struggling pre-beginning writers who do not yet have the guts to finish and mail their stories off. Since it is too difficult to accept that they are not yet published because they have not done enough work yet, sorry, it is preferable to do one of two things.
Either, a) accuse other people who are less worthy of publication of getting in their way, or b) find reasons why they are superior to other amateurs.
On most topics, I just read and move on, but I have a tendency to get annoyed at MOST anti-NaNo rants. Usually the arguments against the activity are either really meanspirited, or in the case of these ones, just... wrong.
Michael Moorcock is the ultimate refutation of this. He used to regularly crank out 60,000 Word Novels in 4 days. On demand, no less. One of them was actually dedicated to Harrods, as he wrote it specifically because he needed cash to pay off his bill there ;)
Man.
I'm just envious.
Yes. It. Does.
Creativity is a skill. As they're fond of reminding people over at Julliard, the deciding factor between a terrible performer and a great performer isn't innate talent, it isn't creativity, it isn't luck: it's practice. The strongest correlation between musical skill and professional success had nothing to do with innate ability and everything to do with the sheer raw number of hours one put in practicing.
Sorry, this is my biggest pet peeve with writer wannabe's and people who dis nano. I'm not doing nano this year because the first five days were eaten alive by my election volunteering and webmastering for some local races, and I'm a little burned out (although I did manage 2,300 words on the 7th; first plus-2000 word day in a few weeks!). You cannot be creative if you don't show up at the typewriter (even the kinds with the television on top) and start banging away at the story.
And "creativity exercises" work. Stuck? Get a big sheet of paper, write down your current stuckness, and then come up with ten ways the characters can unstick the problem. Ten short paragraphs. Pick one. Write it. You might end up throwing it away, but it's better than doing nothing.
I bet I throw away more "driving to the story" chapters in a year than most anti-nano grousers write, period. Driving to the story has to be one of my worst habits, although it does give me character grounding for later.
There's nothing wrong with driving to the story. I mean, you have to cut it later, but one of my roommates wrote 80k-100k words before she wrote the actual novel because she was just screwing around and writing scenes with the characters. Then she cut all that stuff, stuck it in a file, and wrote the actual story.
Most importantly, when it comes to stuff like publication: NOBODY CARES HOW GOOD IT IS IF IT ISN'T FINISHED. :)
Dude, I'm just trying to figure out why every time I sit down to write (or draw) I suddenly HAVE TO HAVE A SHOWER.
I haven't showered in like... more than 48 hours now. I think I can feel my skin rotting off.
Plus, complications mean legitimacy. If anyone can do something, why, then it must be a waste of time!
(I figure if you are favorable, we can hash out prices in teh AIM.)
(I got here through a link, from
Thank you. As a NaNo co-ML and as a fifth-year Nanogeek who's trying to polish two of her manuscripts so they stand out in that slush pile.
Yeah, NaNo's silly and it's FUN. Why does that make it bad?
I've been a nose-in-the-air-must-suffer-for-my-art "artiste" wannabe at one point in my life. Do you know what a crushing BORE I was? Egad. And my writing sucked no less than it does now.
NaNo doesn't work for everyone. Doesn't claim to. But it works for those of us it works for because it adds a little group fun, a little community connection, and a little for-the-common-good-and-benefit-of-those-l
If one WANTS to suffer for one's Arte, nobody's stopping one. *rolls eyes*
I get severely annoyed at the attitude people seem to have in America (at least... though I cannot speak for outside of our borders very well) that if you are going to do anything, you must be good enough to become a pro, or you have failed. Well, shit. Maybe some people just want to write a crappy amateur novel for a month because it's fun.
AND, as someone who hopes to someday sell his novel, I LIKE things like NaNo. I can think of a purely business reason to like it, too. It's simple: which population is most likely to spend money buying new books from published authors? The people who genuinely enjoy literature so much that they take a month out of their lives to try creating it for themselves, or their family members who spend the evening watching 30 Rock and Dance With the Stars?
HMMM....
Yes, analogies.
The other arguments I see against NaNo is that it sets too high a wordcount or is only for a month and it's not sustainable. Both of those I can understand, but it's a good place to get the habit of writing no matter how bad it may be before edits.
Jay Lake's perspective can be safely ignored. Do we listen to hurricanes about how easy it is to blow?
For those of us who're sitting around with our thumbs up our asses, going "GOSH I'D LIKE TO WRITE BUT I *insert make-believe obstacle here*", being challenged to a month-long "race" at least can be inspirational to many to just get something done. The only fault I can possibly find is the concept that by not hitting 50k by the end of the month, you're failing.
Even better, though, it provides a network for people to meet other writers, and find other, possibly slower-paced writing groups (like novel_in_90). In such a lonely profession, that's a welcome side effect.
PS. The world needs more curmudgeons. Carry on!