NaNoWriMo

Been a while since I posted here, but I wanted to write something abut NaNoWriMo, and this seems the best place to put it. So here I am. Hello! Sorry about the dust and tumbleweed. I’ll have a good clean up at some point.

Right.

NaNoWriMo season is upon us once again and so the Nano-haters have begun crawling out of the woodwork, stretching their legs and wielding their snarky comments. It’s something I notice every year, and which drives me crazy every year, and so this year I’ve finally decided to say something.

Because I just don’t get it.  I don’t understand how writers, of all people  – who in my experience are, on the whole, a largely supportive community, and who by definition are natural empathisers because getting inside other people’s heads and understanding things from that point of view is literally WHAT THEY DO AS A JOB, find it necessary to pour scorn on people who decide to take on the NaNoWriMo challenge.

(By ‘writers’, of course, I mean ‘some writers’. Many wonderful writers are entirely supportive of NaNoWriMo. But not everyone is, and the people who are most vocal in their disdain for the process, as far as I can tell, tend to be professional, or partly-professional, writers. They are the people this is aimed at.)

There seems to be some sort of belief among these haters that NaNoWriMo  makes novel writing seem ‘easy’, or somehow devalues the process. That it undermines their own status as writers. And if this were true, I’d understand why some writers react the way they do. Making a living as a writer is hard. REALLY hard. I know that. And it’s natural to want to lash out at something which you feel threatened by.  What I don’t understand is why they perceive NaNoWriMo in this way. Because I’m pretty sure that’s not how anyone taking part sees it.

The arguments I hear reminds me of, and makes about as much sense as, some of the arguments which are used against gay marriage. No-one is going to think less of you as a professional writer because every November a whole bunch of other people have decided to have a go. They’re not doing it to undermine you, or to make a mockery of the profession, or to prove that anyone can do it. They just want to write. More specifically, they just want, for one month of the year,  to join in with the crazy circus which is NaNoWriMo.

I’ve made four attempts at NaNoWriMo over the years, and succeeded with three of them. By 'succeeded' I mean I managed, over the course of 30 days in November,  to get 50,000 words worth of brand new story down on  the page. (Or, if we’re being pedantic about it, into my laptop.)  And that’s all I mean. I don’t claim to have written the next great novel.  I don’t even claim to have written a novel. But each time, I wrote down 50,000 words which I wouldn’t have written down otherwise, and which all told part of the same story.  What I had, at the end of the month was an incomplete, very rough and ready first draft of a story I wanted to tell.

That’s all. And that’s all  I – and most people who take part – mean when I say I have ‘finished’ NaNoWriMo.

Sure we might go on about it a lot, and there are badges and t-shirts and all that jazz, for those who want them. But that’s not because we think we’ve written the Next Big Thing. It's because this watered-down version of ‘finishing’ (or ‘winning’, as some NaNoWriMo-ers refer to it)  is an achievement in itself. We’re celebrating the process, not the product.

No-one takes on NaNoWriMo and finds it easy. The message boards and forums are full of people tearing their hair out, wondering how on earth they are going to find time to meet that day’s quota of words, or stressing out about how behind they are, or wondering how they’re ever going to get out of the cul-de-sac they managed to write themselves into yesterday. For many people who take part, the month is a real roller-coaster of emotions. The challenge becomes crazy and all-encompassing, but that sense of achievement, when you do reach the end, or just ht a particular milestone along the way, is real. Very real.

One of the most galling comments I heard a writer once make about NaNoWriMo was “well, if people need that sort of external structure or motivation to be able to write, they’re clearly not cut out to be a proper writer. Perhaps they shouldn’t be doing it.”

The arrogance of that statement just floors me, every time. Almost every writer I know relies on some sort of structure – external or self-imposed – to force themselves to write.  They have  routines, where they sit at their desk for at the same time each day, or daily and weekly word-count targets, or they rely on deadlines, whether for the completion of a first draft or the next chapter. Many of them belong to writing groups, or have friends who are writers, or rely on the support of a critical friend to give feedback or to talk ideas through during the process. Needing that sort of help doesn’t make you less of a writer, or less ‘proper’. It makes you human.

Perhaps I’m biased, because I owe an awful lot to NaNoWriMo.  It was taking part in my first NaNoWriMo made me fall in love with writing. It was ‘winning’ in that first year which gave me the confidence to give up my safe, permanent job and try and make a living as a freelancer.  NOT because I thought I had suddenly turned into a brilliant writer who could earn money from it (I don’t, or at least not very often), but because I proved something to myself that month. I genuinely didn’t believe that I would finish, but it turned out that I had a great deal more self-discipline than I thought I did.  Discovering that gave me a sense of self-belief, and enough trust in myself to make the leap. Eight years on, I’m still freelancing, and it remains one of the best decisions I’ve ever made. I'm not sure it's one I would have made if I hadn't discovered NaNoWriMo.

And it’s not just me. There are seventeen year olds writing alone in their bedrooms, who, for the month of November, get to be part of a giant, crazy, welcoming  community. There are people of all ages who have incredible stories to tell, and this is the event which inspires them to do just that. For the month of November, NaNoWriMo brings joy (and frustration, and pain, and sleep deprivation…but mainly joy) to thousands of people.  It affects them in ways you or I will never know, and in some cases, can’t even begin to imagine.

Maybe NaNoWriMo is not your thing, and that’s OK. It’s not for everyone. What’s not OK is to sneer at other people who have decided that it is their thing. Or if you’re going to sneer at them, at least do it inside your own head.  Because while yes, everyone is entitled to express their opinion, and that includes the NaNoWriMo haters, I also think it’s important to think about why you’re expressing that opinion, and whether it is going to help anyone. 

My favourite piece of writing advice, which is pinned above my desk, comes from Dave Eggers, who says: “No one can read the thoughts which are in your head. They can only read the words which put down, with great love and care, on the page.”

It’s a simple, but powerful statement. And you know where he made it? In a NaNoWriMo pep talk.

I’m not tackling NaNoWriMo myself this year. I’ve got too much other stuff  going on, with a bunch of short stories to finish, and a podcast I’m trying to get off the ground, and at some point I need to remember to do some work I actually get paid to do. But I’ll be watching from the sidelines, cheering them all on. Whether they ‘finish’ or not, whether it’s their first NaNoWriMo or they’re old hands, they are all in for a glorious ride. Let’s just let them get on with it in peace, shall we? Because by taking part, they're not going to harm anyone, or devalue the profession, or undermine anyone else's position. 

You know what might just do that? Getting all snarky about it.