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nanowrimo.
Feb. 11th, 2013 04:59 pmLately, NaNoWriMo and I have a complicated relationship.
In 2010, I was entrenched in fandom, and when NaNo rolled around, I threw myself into the first original project that I had attempted since I was thirteen or so. I won NaNo – 50k and the solid first draft of a novel that still sits unfinished on my hard drive. But while I was writing that novel, I completely shut myself off. I ignored school, I ignored my job, and I cut myself off from both fandom and my girlfriend – now fiancée – because I had some tragic suffering-for-my-art image, and I was convinced that I could only focus on writing novels. Nothing else.
After my brief bout of insanity, I recovered, and now I happily manage to write books and still participate in fandom and, y'know, real life. Me circa NaNo 2010 was a scary me. I'm a better me now. A me more capable of doing what I want to do with my writing.
Even though my introduction to original fiction was rocky, I never quite let it go after NaNo 2010, and I gradually moved from fanfiction to writing original fiction full-time. So I have NaNo to thank for that. I also have NaNo to thank for finally convincing me that I am capable of writing something longer than 10k.
NaNo 2011 was much more relaxed and much more fun. Why? Because I didn't concentrate on winning. Instead of making my goal 50k, I made my goal a habitual one: I promised myself that I'd sit down and write every day. And I did! I think I finished that year with a little over 30k, most of it miscellaneous bits from stories I was working on at the time.
NaNo 2012 had an entirely different goal. I vowed that I would finish a draft of something and ready it for submission. I waited until the last minute, but I did what I said I would, and managed to double it. On December 1st, I sent out two manuscripts – one to Dreamspinner and one to Torquere. The one for Dreamspinner was rejected because, well. It was terrible, honestly. I didn't care about the characters. There was no reason to. But "Scented" was accepted, and thus NaNo 2012 was successful.
NaNo, up until NaNo 2012, was kind of a shining thing for me. I've met so many wonderful, amazing, creative people through NaNo. My regional group is awesome, and I love my MLs. We're a tight-knit bunch, all of us, and they make me want to come back every year.
During NaNo 2012, one of my friends linked me to a Tumblr that found the most ridiculous things from the NaNo forums and collected them. To my surprise, there was an entire section of the forums called "Dirty Tricks to Get to 50k."
I wish I'd never found that section.
The people in my region are like me: they do NaNo to create something. But the people in that section of the forums suggested things like, "Add all the adjectives you can," and, "Write arbitrary scenes," and, "Write a flashback every other scene," and, "Write chapter headers that are long, like Fall Out Boy song titles."
I'm not highbrow. I think anyone who wants to write should write, and they should do it however they want to. That forum blew me away. It made me wonder how many people do NaNo just for the chance to say that they won, rather than to learn something about writing or to expand their abilities. Or even purely for the sake of doing something! Instead of teaching themselves a thing or two by doing a challenging event and coming out of it bettered, all they wanted was to say, "I wrote 50,000 words in a month." I guess it doesn't matter to them that those words won't matter at all – and by matter, I don't mean that they don't matter in the sense that they won't be published. I mean that they don't matter in the sense that they'll be worthless. No writer will learn anything by writing shit that they know is shit, or by writing word count-padding scenes that are purely for later deletion.
I dunno, you guys. Knowing that that thread exists actually takes away from my own enjoyment of NaNoWriMo. For me, the point of NaNo is creation. When you're writing sentences like, "The petite blond girl rolled her emerald eyes and stomped her booted foot in heated anger," just to increase your word count, that's not creation – it's cheating yourself.
In 2010, I was entrenched in fandom, and when NaNo rolled around, I threw myself into the first original project that I had attempted since I was thirteen or so. I won NaNo – 50k and the solid first draft of a novel that still sits unfinished on my hard drive. But while I was writing that novel, I completely shut myself off. I ignored school, I ignored my job, and I cut myself off from both fandom and my girlfriend – now fiancée – because I had some tragic suffering-for-my-art image, and I was convinced that I could only focus on writing novels. Nothing else.
After my brief bout of insanity, I recovered, and now I happily manage to write books and still participate in fandom and, y'know, real life. Me circa NaNo 2010 was a scary me. I'm a better me now. A me more capable of doing what I want to do with my writing.
Even though my introduction to original fiction was rocky, I never quite let it go after NaNo 2010, and I gradually moved from fanfiction to writing original fiction full-time. So I have NaNo to thank for that. I also have NaNo to thank for finally convincing me that I am capable of writing something longer than 10k.
NaNo 2011 was much more relaxed and much more fun. Why? Because I didn't concentrate on winning. Instead of making my goal 50k, I made my goal a habitual one: I promised myself that I'd sit down and write every day. And I did! I think I finished that year with a little over 30k, most of it miscellaneous bits from stories I was working on at the time.
NaNo 2012 had an entirely different goal. I vowed that I would finish a draft of something and ready it for submission. I waited until the last minute, but I did what I said I would, and managed to double it. On December 1st, I sent out two manuscripts – one to Dreamspinner and one to Torquere. The one for Dreamspinner was rejected because, well. It was terrible, honestly. I didn't care about the characters. There was no reason to. But "Scented" was accepted, and thus NaNo 2012 was successful.
NaNo, up until NaNo 2012, was kind of a shining thing for me. I've met so many wonderful, amazing, creative people through NaNo. My regional group is awesome, and I love my MLs. We're a tight-knit bunch, all of us, and they make me want to come back every year.
During NaNo 2012, one of my friends linked me to a Tumblr that found the most ridiculous things from the NaNo forums and collected them. To my surprise, there was an entire section of the forums called "Dirty Tricks to Get to 50k."
I wish I'd never found that section.
The people in my region are like me: they do NaNo to create something. But the people in that section of the forums suggested things like, "Add all the adjectives you can," and, "Write arbitrary scenes," and, "Write a flashback every other scene," and, "Write chapter headers that are long, like Fall Out Boy song titles."
I'm not highbrow. I think anyone who wants to write should write, and they should do it however they want to. That forum blew me away. It made me wonder how many people do NaNo just for the chance to say that they won, rather than to learn something about writing or to expand their abilities. Or even purely for the sake of doing something! Instead of teaching themselves a thing or two by doing a challenging event and coming out of it bettered, all they wanted was to say, "I wrote 50,000 words in a month." I guess it doesn't matter to them that those words won't matter at all – and by matter, I don't mean that they don't matter in the sense that they won't be published. I mean that they don't matter in the sense that they'll be worthless. No writer will learn anything by writing shit that they know is shit, or by writing word count-padding scenes that are purely for later deletion.
I dunno, you guys. Knowing that that thread exists actually takes away from my own enjoyment of NaNoWriMo. For me, the point of NaNo is creation. When you're writing sentences like, "The petite blond girl rolled her emerald eyes and stomped her booted foot in heated anger," just to increase your word count, that's not creation – it's cheating yourself.