My previous post was 963 words. That's how much I wrote last night in the space of three hours for my NaNoWriMo novel before I finally just went to bed. I wrote this in about... What? 15 minutes? Because I had something to say.

I hear people say that 50,000 words in 30 days is no big deal. Yes, we know. Really, we do. But there's a difference between writing 50,000 words on something like a collection of blog post or forum posts or chat rooms. I'm not exactly sure what the difference is... I guess since you're usually discussing your own opinions, or what's happened to you in the last few days, or you're writing a report on some history, you've already got an idea for what you want to write! Everything's already thought out and all you have to do is put it into words. 1,667 words a day is easy peasy. I KNOW I write almost that much just navigating around my computers with the command line!

The issue with NaNoWriMo is that you're writing something that you DON'T have all planned out already. (Some do, and I did, but once I actually got writing, I've already changed so much that my plans are all gone.) It gets slow and it gets hard because now you're writing what's coming straight from your mind, and sometimes you just don't have any creative juice pumping. Your writing gets slow and bad because you're working hard to come up with an idea so you can reach your goal, and this makes for some pretty horrible plot points and conversations when you go back to read it. Frankly, it looks like a Harry Potter book. (Oh, yes, I so did go there.)

But see, writing a perfect novel isn't the point of NaNoWriMo. The point is to get down what ideas you DO have for a novel, and then see what happens when you toss a bunch of characters in and let them run around, as defined by a very loose intangible concept of a weak plot. They run around, they BREAK the plot, and you have to rewrite it. Sometimes you don't like the changes, sometimes you do. If you don't like the changes, don't erase it, just keep going. I've written myself into a dead end a couple of times and just went "PFFT! I'm watching Babylon 5 instead." Maybe that's what you need to do, because after I watched and came back, I knew how to finish the dead end, but... If you're stuck on a dead end for longer than you want. Skip it! Move ahead and write what happens next. When you go after the second draft, maybe you'll keep it or chuck it.

So this is just something I needed to say (which is also what makes writing so easy). I've heard the arguments for why NaNo is dumb, and I'm in the middle of week 3 and behind (like everyone else is) and think my NaNo is dumb, but... You know what? It's supposed to be. Tolkien didn't write Lord of the Rings in a month. It took him 40 years with much encouragement from friends. If you're doing NaNo and you think it's starting to seem dumb, don't worry! Lord of the Rings is one of the best stories ever written and Tolkien also thought it was dumb. If you're NOT doing NaNo because you think it's dumb... Then you just don't know what it takes to write a novel and there's no need to tell everyone else that NaNo is dumb, because, frankly, they're at that point in the month where they think it's dumb, too, and they don't need the discouragement.

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 15th, 2007 at 3:14 pm and is filed under General, NaNoWriMo.