Why I Love NaNoWriMo - And You Might, Too.

(Cross posted to Wicked Authors; http://www.wickedauthors.com.)

"Writing is like prostitution. First you do it for fun, then for money, then you recruit other people." – From one of my many writing-themed pinback buttons, and also a bastardization of Molière's original quote.

I can think of no other modern day event which better exemplifies this statement than National Novel Writing Month, otherwise known as NaNoWriMo or NaNo.

For the possibly three dozen people out there living under rocks who have never heard of NaNo, it's a month long event during which participants are encouraged to write a 50,000 word novel. This year, I'm one of those participants. And, like the writing whore I am, I recruited a couple of other people to suffer along with me for a month.

As a former teacher and literacy advocate, I've always taken the view that anything which encouraged people to read or to write is a good thing. For obvious reasons, NaNo falls squarely into the latter category. Whether one comes out of the event with a publishable 50K work in final draft form (highly doubtful) or not, I can't help but think the experience is beneficial for the participants.

Some people disagree with me, however. As NaNo's popularity has continued to grow, so have the number of naysayers. At first, I saw only the occasional blog post. Last year, Laura Miller of salon.com noted the start of the event with a scathing anti-NaNo article, calling writing a "narcissistic pursuit", claiming NaNo's goals were "a waste of time" and stating that events which promoted reading, rather than writing, were what were needed.

In the past, I've shrugged all this aside and gone on my merry way. After all, everyone's entitled to their opinion. However, this year, the anti-NaNo sentiment has even trickled into some of my writing circles. For the first time, I'm seeing a chilling effect, and I don't like it.

For all the pro-NaNo blogs and articles out there, few directly refute any of the claims of the anti-NaNoists. Since I was fuming a little after reading my last writer's loop (and since I needed a blog post, anyway) I thought I'd try a rebuttal.

What follows are my responses to some of the more touted anti-NaNo claims. I'll start with a few of Miller's.

1. "..."writing a lot of crap” doesn’t sound like a particularly fruitful way to spend an entire month, even if it is November."

Let's start with the source from whence this objection springs. Despite being a senior writer at salon.com, Miller states she's not a novelist. To the best of my knowledge, she has never participated in NaNoWriMo. Her one published work is an essay about her gleanings from C.S. Lewis's Narnia books. At least Miller is honest about her lack of experience as a novelist. However, because she is not a novelist, I don't consider Miller a credible source about what does and does not work for novel writing, anymore than I'd consider someone who's never built anything an expert in how to build a house. At best, she's a back seat driver on a journey she's never taken. So I take anything she has to say about NaNo and novel writing in general with a livestock-sized block of salt.

The statement to which Miller takes exception is from NaNo founder Chris Baty's summation of what writers can expect from NaNo. Baty's point is that many writers, like Eliot's Prufrock, get caught up in 'decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse', and as a result, get nowhere. The point of NaNo for these people is to get it out and get it down.

But hey. The phrase 'writing a lot of crap' doesn't exactly inspire confidence, I grant you. So what can 'writing a lot of crap' do for you?

Plenty, according to some real experts in the field. (Real as in: have actually written multiple novels, unlike Miller.) To paraphrase Nora Roberts (whom one has to admit has prolific down to a fine science), one can't edit a blank page. Multi-published author and workshop instructor Anna DeStefano says she keeps a sign over her desk which says, "You have my permission to write crap!" Why? Because when she analyzed the reason she was not as productive as she wanted, she found she was wasting a great deal of time on perfecting a rough draft in progress instead of accepting the rough draft would be rough, finishing the draft, and then revising what she had.

Nor is DeStefano alone in her advice. Doing a quick Google search and putting my head together with a couple of writing friends produced no less than seven well known and well respected writing instructors who give the exact same advice, and for the same reasons.

And they get results. So do the writers who follow their advice.

What Miller overlooks is that none of these people, Baty included, are saying that one should not edit one's work, nor that 'crap' is the final goal. It's simply a directive to sit down, turn off the internal editor, and write. It's a way to stop second-guessing yourself and get words on a page.

As someone who regularly kneecaps herself with heavy draft editing, this is advice I can appreciate.

Unlike Miller, I'm not going to be guilty of overgeneralization. I won't say the "write crap" approach works for everyone, because everyone has a different approach to the writing process. I'm not even going to say that some people don't skip the critical revision step and leave their work as crap. I am saying that for most would-be writers, writing "a lot of crap" is, indeed, a profitable way to spend a November. At one of the largest Alaskan gold mines, miners typically sift through 33 tons of waste rock to refine just one ounce of pure gold. Writing is the same. No waste rock means nothing to refine.

2. People waste money on how-to books and materials. Businesses have jumped onto the bandwagon, further commercializing the creative process.

To this claim, I have but one counter: every purchase made benefits the economy. Therefore, even if someone never cracks that how-to book they bought, they've supported the publisher, the editors and the author. If by some chance that person actually does learn something from the book and is able to produce his or her own publishable work, then that person is also providing work for an editor and a publisher, plus pumping a product for sale out into the marketplace.

One might successfully argue the effectiveness of the how-to publications or even whether such an expenditure benefits the individual who makes the purchase. As far as the general economy is concerned, however, these products are not a waste of money. Moreover, anyone who actually does read the books is learning something, and the former teacher in me says learning is never a waste.

3. NaNoWriMo encourages people to write when they should be reading.

Garbage. Even if participants only read the work of other participants, they are still reading. Further, I counter with the argument that the effort of writing a novel increases the appreciation of readers for writers and the effort which goes into writing a manuscript.

For example: I've lost count of how many times I've been asked what I write. When I reply, 'romantic and literary erotica', at least twenty-five percent of the time, the response is, "You know, I've meant to sit down one weekend and bang out one of those myself."

I'm never sure what irritates me more about that comment: the hubris of someone who's never composed anything assuming they could write a full length novel, or the sheer ignorance that assumes they could do so in a 48 hour period.

However, there is one thing of which I am certain, and that is that nobody who has participated in NaNo, successfully or otherwise, will ever make that statement. If people come away with a new respect for the time and effort it takes to create a work of fiction (or, for that fact, non-fiction), I'd call it a win.

In short, Miller's objections are groundless. But she created controversy, got hits for salon.com, and managed to get attention through ignorance, so I suppose her purpose was served.

Another well-trafficked blog entry from 2006 entitled "Why I Hate NaNo, And Why You Should, Too" by Eric Rosenfeld provides another laundry list of complaints about the event, some of which echo Miller's. In his comments post-blog, however, Rosenfeld ends up making some of the most elitist complaints I've yet heard about the event, including the following:

4. "It's the idea that writing a novel is something anyone and everyone should do that bothers me, and that writing a novel is somehow seperate [sic] from dedicating yourself seriously to the craft of writing."

My question is, what is the fabled criteria which indicates whether someone should or should not write a novel? Or, in fact, write at all? Is it an advanced degree in English or a writing-related field from a university? Better scratch Shakespeare. Should one not write if one cannot be a full time writer? That would eliminate a list of writers longer than Santa's fabled list, especially as poorly as many authors are paid. Even many writers who have become commercially successful did not start out that way; Stephen King taught high school and drove a bus while writing Carrie.

Rosenfeld goes on to say that while he believes it admirable to want to become a better writer, it is not admirable to simply want to (essentially) churn out 50K words in order to cross a finish line or check off some life goal. Further, in his blog, Rosenfeld speculates most participants will never write another word after that 50K magnum opus.

Now, I'm willing to cut Rosenfeld some slack. He did do a follow up blog post in 2009 which moaned a little about how much grief he'd gotten for the original blog post (although he does say it was the one with the highest hit count) and admitted he'd had some time to rethink some of his more controversial statements. He doesn't out and out rescind what he said, but he does grudgingly admit that NaNo might, for some authors, be useful. (Big of ya there, Eric.)

However, I again must give a NaNo objector credit. Rosenfeld was really honest enough to post what I've heard others say. That, in fact, if you're just going to do a one-and-done novel, why bother trying?

Guess it's a good thing neither Harper Lee nor J.D. Salinger, among others, took that advice.

In my (never humble, but always present) opinion, the only way to know whether one is a writer is to write. It may well be that a number of individuals who attempt the NaNoWriMo challenge find that the process is much harder than they expected. They may find the work doesn't appeal. This happens in many careers, not just writing. The point is, unless one attempts to write, one will never know. And that is precisely the kind of opportunity NaNo provides.

Finally, we have the objection I read on my writer's loop, the one which really kicked me into writing this post.

5. NaNoWriMo produces a glut of inferior works which agents and editors then have to sort through, thus clogging the pipes for 'real' writers.

Multi-published author and writing instructor Holly Lisle wrote an excellent article called Money from Nothing: The Economic Value of Writing Original Fiction which deals with the opposite side of that argument. In summary, Lisle takes the view that submissions, even poor ones, drive the market. Without manuscripts, the editors and agents have no jobs. These people get paid to wade through literary crap.

Let's face it: Anyone who discourages other people from even making an attempt at writing something has a personal agenda. When people complain that 'amateurs are clogging the market', what they're really saying is that they're afraid of the competition. That's not only petty, that's sad. If you want to be published, write a better book, don't seek to eliminate those who can.

Overall, I think what even the worst writers can gain through NaNo is an appreciation for the difficulty of the novel-writing process. They're less likely to take good fiction for granted. They're better informed readers, if only because they now understand that the book they just read wasn't written in a day, but is the product of someone's weeks or months of brain-wracking effort. If they submit a subpar work and are rejected, they also understand the heartbreaking struggle writers go through in order to get their work published.

But for the one in a thousand or even one in a hundred thousand who has something worthwhile to say, NaNo can be gold, both for writers and for readers.

To my fellow NaNoers on the journey: Best of luck to you all.