Why NaNoWriMo Is A Terrible Idea (an artist's perspective)
Being new to the writing community, I only heard about National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) for the first time this year and at first I was intrigued by the idea but soon came to realize that it was a terrible one and tried to ignore it, which is pretty hard to do considering every second Pintrest post is about "how to win at NaNoWriMo."
As I mentioned in my last post Lets Get This Out Of The Way I studied Visual Art and NaNoWriMo reminds me strongly of a compulsory exercise I did in my third year which I have little to no fond memories of; it was called Blood Week.
Blood Week was done at the beginning of third year - the year when set projects were no longer a part of the curriculum as we were entering the phase of our education where we were to produce a thesis and a body of work that would be a part of a group exhibition at the end of the year. In order to break the habit of doing disjointed projects for different subjects at the same time the lecturers came up with Blood Week, it comprised of a constant stream of creative output to help get the creative juices flowing as it were.
The work we produced in that time - you best believe it was a lot of work - was not meant for exhibition, it wasn't even meant to see the light of day again; it was meant to train the brain into a mode of constant production, into a mode of creative thinking that could be drawn upon to create a cohesive body of work, which we would then spend an entire year working on. It was meant to be difficult and strenuous and maddening but it helped give us the ability to pull all the skills we had learned over the last two years together.
The work we produced in that time - you best believe it was a lot of work - was not meant for exhibition, it wasn't even meant to see the light of day again; it was meant to train the brain into a mode of constant production, into a mode of creative thinking that could be drawn upon to create a cohesive body of work, which we would then spend an entire year working on. It was meant to be difficult and strenuous and maddening but it helped give us the ability to pull all the skills we had learned over the last two years together.
Do you see what I'm getting at here? The work produced in Blood Week was by no means good, it was the process that was important, and the problem I have with NaNoWriMo is that the whole premise is to produce a body of work (50,000 words) in a month that is supposed to be worth a damn.
It's impossible (unless you're Stephen King) to create that much of anything worthwhile in such a short space of time, I'm a firm believer in quality over quantity and I would rather spend a month writing a few brilliant chapters than two thirds of a shit book.
It's impossible (unless you're Stephen King) to create that much of anything worthwhile in such a short space of time, I'm a firm believer in quality over quantity and I would rather spend a month writing a few brilliant chapters than two thirds of a shit book.
I'm not saying its impossible to have days where you can bang out 6000 words of impeccable writing that you can be proud of, I've done it. I'm saying that you cannot 'bleed' that much every single day. Those brilliant moments come to you after hours or days of banging your head against your keyboard, those moments come when you've put in your due diligence of of slogging through your daily average of 1000 words and when those moments are done you will feel drained and tired and uninspired, you will have to go out, leave your room and get refreshed before you sit down at your keys again. But if you buy into the pressure of achieving your impossibly high daily NaNoWriMo word count you will produce something average or below average and anything short of brilliance is unacceptable.
"But Meg, NaNoWriMo is more than just vomiting up a half baked story, its about community and supporting one another." - I'm sorry but I call bullshit on that, its a competition so you can see who's produced more or less than you have, its about seeing who can do the most, not who can do the best, and if we are competing against one another then we are not supporting one another; how can you possibly support another writer when you have to focus on your plot, theme, message, dialogue, well rounded characters and lets not forget 2500 words (that's with weekends off) each day? You're supporting no one but yourself and that is as it should be; you alone with your words.
Inspiration may come from the outside, but creativity comes from within; your ability to create something wonderful is inside you and to tap into that you need to bleed, so if you do NaNoWriMo as your own version of Blood Week where you are training your brain to create then yes, go for it, create those new neural pathways and then take the time to focus on your book. However if you are doing it to reach that word count in the hope that you will produce something worthwhile then I'm sorry to have to tell you, you are failing.
So many writers who have heard my opinion on the matter have said to me that NaNoWriMo has helped them sit down and actually accomplish the task of writing and I find myself wondering why they lacked the conviction to do it on their own in the first place? Why have they fallen into the trap of 'if no one saw it, it didn't happen'? These are the questions we need to be asking not just of writers but of society in general.
So many writers who have heard my opinion on the matter have said to me that NaNoWriMo has helped them sit down and actually accomplish the task of writing and I find myself wondering why they lacked the conviction to do it on their own in the first place? Why have they fallen into the trap of 'if no one saw it, it didn't happen'? These are the questions we need to be asking not just of writers but of society in general.
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