It’s NaNoWriMo time again!
Valuing enthusiasm and perseverance over painstaking craft, NaNoWriMo is a novel-writing program for everyone who has thought fleetingly about writing a novel but has been scared away by the time and effort involved.
Because of the limited writing window, the ONLY thing that matters in NaNoWriMo is output. It’s all about quantity, not quality. The kamikaze approach forces you to lower your expectations, take risks, and write on the fly.
Make no mistake: You will be writing a lot of crap. And that’s a good thing. By forcing yourself to write so intensely, you are giving yourself permission to make mistakes. To forgo the endless tweaking and editing and just create. To build without tearing down.
I tried it several years ago. I got several days and six hundred words in before I gave up. But the experience sure taught me something: I suck. I write incredibly worthless fiction. I pretty much knew that, but some lessons you don’t learn on the first try. Pity, because I’d’ve liked to be a novelist.
NaBloPoMo is really more my style. Not that I plan to squeeze out a
blog post every day in November, either. I like it because it sounds like
“blow me” when I say it in my head.
October 28, 2008 — 1:04 pm
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