The Top Four Anti-NaNoWriMo Arguments (And Why They Are Bullshit)
National Novel Writing Month has its detractors, many of whom are professional writers or work in the publishing industry, whether in acquisition, criticism, editing, or something else.
Even Tumblr is rife with anti-Nano blogs that mock users of the NaNo siteâs forum and malign the entire enterprise. NaNoWriMo, despite being an annual event that is celebrating its fourteenth anniversary this year, is still seen by many as amateurish, lame, or just a plain waste of time.
Of course, if you donât want to participate in the month, thatâs totally fine. Itâs not amenable to everyoneâs schedule, writing style, or goals. But if youâre losing momentum simply because the critics have poured poison in your ear or because the task seems too daunting, do not fret. Thereâs an answer to every misgiving. Here are some of the most common anti-NaNo complaints that Iâve heard in the last two years of participating, as well as responses.
1. Not Everyone Should Write
This is mainly a publishing industry claim. The worry is that more people write (and dream of publication) than actually spend time and money on fiction. Itâs true: books on publishing and writing fiction sell better than fiction itself. This gets conventionally published writers in a tizzy sometimes. It seems pretty solipsistic, doesnât it, for us all to write our own work and never read othersâ?
This claim is fueled by the fear that print media is dying, and it proliferates based on a faulty assumption that writers do not also read. Listen, we are all lazyfuck procrastinators, and one of the best procrastinatory exercises for a writer is to read the work of another, more accomplished person.
The amateur writers are not the ones to blame for the decline of reading. Donât shit on them, publishing mavens, please. Please. Theyâre your allies in the fight for literacy. We write because we love to read, and we want to become a part of the art form we cherish. Donât worry that our month of writing will turn us into narcisstics non-readers. Weâll dive into a comforting pile of books as soon as Novemberâs out, if not sooner.
Besides, isnât the world a better place when everyone is both a consumer and a producer of content? Isnât it better to have a participatory marketplace of ideas rather than a one-sided stream, shoveled into the eyeballs of passive buyers? We should all be thankful that there are people who want to spend their downtime creating art, even if itâs bad art, goddammit.
This is another common anti-NaNo complaint. 50,000 words does not a novel make, publishers complain. Slush piles get filled with half-complete, short NaNoWriMo works every December, everyone in the industry says. Yick.
Thatâs only a valid complaint if you figure everyone writes during NaNo and stops immediately. This usually isnât the case. 50k words is a draft, a set of scaffolding, and in most cases itâs a substantial start. What you write in a month will not be a finished product, but thatâs true regardless of how many words you shit out. Writing a novel is a long-ass process with countless rounds of line, technical, and structural edits.
Besides, 50k is not so short. Many novels and memoirs are of a modest length, like Half a Life by Darin Strauss, Cherry by Mary Karr, The Awakening by Kate Chopin, Quicksand by Nella Larsen, The Metamorphosis by Kafka, Of Mice and Men by Steinbeck, The Shawshank Redemption and The Mist by Stephen King, and countless other classic and contemporary works.
Short does not mean middling or simplistic or unfinished. And 50K is a significant yet accomplishable goal, and thus a great benchmark for new writers. Besides, itâs a draft. Itâll get better. Itâs a process.
3. It Wonât Get Published
This is the shittiest, grumpiest anti-NaNo claim of all. Most NaNo drafts, detractors claim, end up buried in a virtual file cabinet and ignored for all time. They are never edited, never submitted, and certainly never published by a conventional press.
Statistically, this is almost certainly true, but it misses the point of the month entirely. Most NaNo-ers do not set out to write a work that will a secure a book deal and a windfall of cash. Weâre not that stupid or entitled. Many do it to challenge themselves, or to participate in a writing exercise with other literarily-inclined friends. Some do it so they can get an idea out of them, or to give themselves writing practice. Some people participate in NaNo simply to give it a try, and see what happens.
And every year, from each of these groups, there arise thousands of people who produce works they are proud of. People who never would have seen themselves as writers before that month. And from the hundreds of thousands of avid NaNo participants, every year there are a few who write objectively good and marketable books, who secure publishing contracts and become for real-real authors. Here is a list of a few of them. Thereâs over a hundred, and thatâs just for people who conventionally published.
4. Writing That Quickly Produces Crap Garbage Shit
Some argue that writing as quickly as NaNoWriMoâs word count goal requires necessarily means youâll produce shit work. To hit 1,667 words a day, one must bang out ideas on the fly, cram the prose with complex descriptions that are unnecessary, and just generally blather. The work that results is quantity, not quality, and so forth.
This is and isnât true. Some people can write 1,667 words a day without a problem, and only need the external motivation that NaNo provides in order to accomplish that goal. Others have never written so much and so quickly,and will in fact pad out their prose to meet their goals. Others will try their darndest and fall flat.
NaNo is more flexible than all that, however. 50k words is not a hard goal; you can participate in NaNo however you like. You can just set a goal of writing an hour or two per day, no matter the word count result. You can show up to public write-ins around town and write on paper and pencil and never keep track of the length, as I have seen many people do. Or you can try to tear through that goal in a flurry of words, some of which will be terrible, and come back to edit later.
Thatâs fine! NaNoWriMo produces a first draft, nothing more; all first drafts are garbage shit. I can guarantee you that more writers struggle from motivational and content-production problems than they do editing problems. NaNoWriMo is a godsend because it provides external motivation, discrete goals, social pressure, and social support all in one, and helps writers of all ability levels exceed their normal productivity. Which is what most writers want: to write more, and to feel like part of a community.
You can follow NaNoWrimo in whatever way you like. You can take advantage of the public writing events and make new friends or find a source of inspiration. You can regulate your schedule and increase your productivity. You can write a nonfiction memoir or script, if you want. You can bang out a hastily-written, voluminous rough draft, or you can meticulously select the perfect 500 words every day over the course of two hours.
The point isnât the word count goal, or whether you âwinâ, or whether the book gets published. The goal is to write, and join hundreds of thousands of writers as they banish their inner editor for a month, drive out the negative voices that keep them from writing, and put their hopeful fingers to their keyboards.
If itâs not your kind of thing, thatâs cool. But if you think that maybe, just maybe, you might enjoy it, give it a shot. Look up local write-ins and other events, and join the NaNo site. Most of all, donât listen to the anti-NaNo voices, or your inner editor. Theyâll still be around in December, if you miss them.
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