National Novel Writing Month is the perfect way to write your first novel, or to restart writing after a dry spell.
It zeroes in on everything that non first-timers from writing. It uses and abuses our cognitive biases to get something done that looks like a novel. It’s an act of self-hypnosis without equal (and I mean that in genuine praise and awe).
It takes our human instinct for loss-aversion (“What if I FAIL?”) and uses it to the draft-writer’s advantage by manipulating the definition of “loss” to “not 50,000 words”.
It takes our fear of wasting our time on a fruitless pursuit, and says “we only want a month from you. What’s a wasted November? It’s the worst month anyway.”
It takes our herd instinct - our desire to not be alone in what we do - and says, “NaNoWriMo is a way of taking part. It is a way of engaging with the world. And not necessarily around your novel, which could be uncomfortable, but around writing itself, which cannot possibly be bad.”
For all these reasons, and many more reasons that will be personal to each writer (it’s a long story, but when I did it in 2010, it completely sorted my head out), NaNo is the perfect place to start.
But it’s also an addiction - and the way NaNo’s constructed sometimes feels designed as a facsimile of the addictions - social media, drugs, content - of our age.
It’s that balance of commitment and freedom.
The unconditional love of a temporary community.
The fetishisation of quantity of communication of quality - I can guarantee you’ve written about 50k in status updates in your life so far.
Above all, the sense of novelty. The creed that ‘new’ beats ‘better’. You can tell an unedited NaNo novel by the preponderance of space-bears, explosions and dream sequences. By just how much the scene rotates.
This isn’t theory so much as a confession. I’ve been trying to edit my NaNo ’14 novel for about six months. It’s really hard. And the fingerprints of haste are all over it - characters try desperate things, emotional arcs flip (in a bad way), and there is always, but always, something new on the horizon. Not all stories are linear journeys. But a month of writing is - it has a start, and end, and a win condition - and I’m willing to bet most of its novels have a similar shape. I know mine does, and it’s the work of the next year to try and undo that: to give characters wholeness, to make them actors upon rather than victims of the plot. Perhaps better prepared NaNo novels don’t suffer this. But most people don’t prepare beyond a high concept (and I hate to contradict myself, but if they do then yeah, they miss out on one of the great pleasures of nano. Pantsing it is fun.)
I’m not trying to be sententious, here. Or if I am, it’s to myself more than anyone else.
If you just need to get started, to understand that fingers can hit keys and a world can come out, then by all means throw yourself at NaNo, screaming with joy and stuffing Costa Coffee and Haribo Tangfastics down your throat. If you were thinking about doing it, but haven’t started yet - start now. It is not too late. If you give it your whole heart you will like it, then hate it, then love it. Watch the word mountain grow, celebrate with friends, but know that what you’re doing is the writing version of Movember. I reckon that on the 1st of December, 10% of people who’ve done Movember realise that they actually rather like the beard, and then realise that beards come in different shapes and sizes, and that getting the one that’s right for you right now takes time, effort, and that weird oil.
A novel is the same. If you now know you can write, or if you have a manuscript in front of you. Recognise without shame that NaNo is creative fast food. If you need to do it to fall in love with writing again, I can’t argue with that. But if you wish to call yourself a writer - and you wish others to call you one, too - it’s time for tough love. If NaNo is the Yellow Brick Road, then there is a longer and harder road just to the left. It’s less well-maintained. It doubles back on itself, a lot. There are far few people walking it, and they seem to have a certain grimness on their faces.
But, writer, it’s the only road for you.
