To NaNoWriMo or not NaNoWriMo
That time of year is almost upon us: November - National Novel Writing Month (or 'NaNoWriMo'). For those who don't know, NaNoWriMo is a challenge to write a 50,000 word novel in a month.
Anyone who was knocking around here when the place was cluttered with scraps of rusting metal might remember that I attempted the NaNoWriMo challenge last year. I managed to churn out 25,000 words before I ran out of steam. Redundancy induced stress also contributed to aborting the project but I do remember reaching a point where there were so many holes in my various plot strands that I had no idea how to patch them up. Then again, I only decided that I was going to take on the challenge on the morning of 1 November so I had done no planning and hadn't even thought up a storyline. On the evening of the first day of the challenge I sat down at the keyboard with absolutely no idea of what I was going to write.
Curiously enough, the three attempts I have made to write a novel have all faltered at around 25,000 words. Prior to last year's NaNoWriMo attempt, I started two novels, both of which I abandoned because they were shite. My NaNoWriMo novel, although trashy and a complete mess, was not as bad as its two aborted predecessors. It did suffer from lack of planning, though, and the many strands I had made up on the spot as I went along became an incomprehensible mass of stuff that I could no longer fathom. I was not too bothered about writing an entirely coherrent story - the purpose of NaNoWriMo is, after all, to see if can you manage to write a 50K word novel in a month regardless of whether it is any good or not - and I was in the mood to write something weird and dark and strange but I ended up creating too many threads and characters, the CPU of my mind just couldn't take it and my entire cerebral system crashed.
Ironically, the two previous novels I attempted both had lengthy gestation periods in my brain and in handwritten notes but it still took 25,000 words to realise that both stories were fundamentally crap. So even though my NaNoWriMo attempt failed because I had created something ultimately unmanageable, it turned out to be a worthwhile exercise. For almost three weeks I was writing about 1,500 words a night after coming home from work and even more on the weekends. Despite making it all up scene by scene, there was some good ideas and good writing in amongst the mess. People have always told me that I think too much and they may be right... up to a point.
So, the question: should I attempt NaNoWriMo again this year? On the one hand, I am still stressing over my (current lack of) career, money, anything remotely resembling a social life but, on the other, focussing on writing a novel in a month would be a welcome distraction from such concerns.
If I do decide to make the attempt, I have three options:
I doubt I will go for the first option because, although it would be good to finally get an initial rough draft of that story on paper, I wouldn't be able to do justice to all the ideas I want to put into that novel in such a short space of time. I realise that it would need much revising after the first draft but I don't think it would be useful to produce a draft of total garbage.
I have a month to devise a completely new story but I find the second option appealing. I wouldn't use this as an excuse to cheat and recycle chunks of prose I wrote last year to quickly crank up my word count because that would defeat the point of taking part in the challenge. I would merely take the basic conceit and create a tighter, more focussed narrative around it. I still fancy writing something weird and dark and strange but this time I will have the luxury of working out the general trajectory of the thing before I start and avoid writing myself into terminal confusion.
OK, you've convinced me. I'm going to do it.
Anyone who was knocking around here when the place was cluttered with scraps of rusting metal might remember that I attempted the NaNoWriMo challenge last year. I managed to churn out 25,000 words before I ran out of steam. Redundancy induced stress also contributed to aborting the project but I do remember reaching a point where there were so many holes in my various plot strands that I had no idea how to patch them up. Then again, I only decided that I was going to take on the challenge on the morning of 1 November so I had done no planning and hadn't even thought up a storyline. On the evening of the first day of the challenge I sat down at the keyboard with absolutely no idea of what I was going to write.
Curiously enough, the three attempts I have made to write a novel have all faltered at around 25,000 words. Prior to last year's NaNoWriMo attempt, I started two novels, both of which I abandoned because they were shite. My NaNoWriMo novel, although trashy and a complete mess, was not as bad as its two aborted predecessors. It did suffer from lack of planning, though, and the many strands I had made up on the spot as I went along became an incomprehensible mass of stuff that I could no longer fathom. I was not too bothered about writing an entirely coherrent story - the purpose of NaNoWriMo is, after all, to see if can you manage to write a 50K word novel in a month regardless of whether it is any good or not - and I was in the mood to write something weird and dark and strange but I ended up creating too many threads and characters, the CPU of my mind just couldn't take it and my entire cerebral system crashed.
Ironically, the two previous novels I attempted both had lengthy gestation periods in my brain and in handwritten notes but it still took 25,000 words to realise that both stories were fundamentally crap. So even though my NaNoWriMo attempt failed because I had created something ultimately unmanageable, it turned out to be a worthwhile exercise. For almost three weeks I was writing about 1,500 words a night after coming home from work and even more on the weekends. Despite making it all up scene by scene, there was some good ideas and good writing in amongst the mess. People have always told me that I think too much and they may be right... up to a point.
So, the question: should I attempt NaNoWriMo again this year? On the one hand, I am still stressing over my (current lack of) career, money, anything remotely resembling a social life but, on the other, focussing on writing a novel in a month would be a welcome distraction from such concerns.
If I do decide to make the attempt, I have three options:
- Take the opportunity to bash out a first draft of the novel I have been mulling over for some time.
- Resurrect the central premise of my last NaNoWriMo novel.
- Start from scratch and come up with a brand new story not based on any previous ideas.
I doubt I will go for the first option because, although it would be good to finally get an initial rough draft of that story on paper, I wouldn't be able to do justice to all the ideas I want to put into that novel in such a short space of time. I realise that it would need much revising after the first draft but I don't think it would be useful to produce a draft of total garbage.
I have a month to devise a completely new story but I find the second option appealing. I wouldn't use this as an excuse to cheat and recycle chunks of prose I wrote last year to quickly crank up my word count because that would defeat the point of taking part in the challenge. I would merely take the basic conceit and create a tighter, more focussed narrative around it. I still fancy writing something weird and dark and strange but this time I will have the luxury of working out the general trajectory of the thing before I start and avoid writing myself into terminal confusion.
OK, you've convinced me. I'm going to do it.
posted by Steve Kane at 9:00 PM
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