A Writer Against NaNoWriMo

[browngirl]

So, Alma A. Hromic, a writer, has written an article condemning NaNoWriMo and its participants, which can be read here: http://www.swans.com/library/art8/aah032.html

I have to admit, I was a bit worried about reactions like this one, because I have friends who write for a living, friends who have written for years and years, and I worried about seeming to trivialize their vocation and livelihood. What do people think of her take on NaNoWriMo, not least you, my friends on LJ who are writers?

Comments

[porcinea.livejournal.com]

I think she has no sense of humor.

[mittelbar.livejournal.com]

Beat me to it.

[ex-serenejo.livejournal.com]

My thought is that she needs to develop a sense of humor, a sense of perspective, and a powerful flashlight to find the stick that's up her ass. Not necessarily in that order. NaNoWriMo is fun and doesn't pretend to be anything but fun. People who write 50,000 words of crap, admit it, and take joy in it for the sheer fun of it, are not taking anything away from people who write good novels by the sweat of their brows.

[nsingman.livejournal.com]

I'm not a writer, though I can express myself fairly well in writing. I'm a professional, experienced, and pretty well-compensated computer programmer. I know my industry (financial services) very well, and am rather highly regarded by my colleagues and employers. I say this not to boast, but to note that my standing is in no way diminished by the fact that there are recreational programmers, trainees and students out there who choose to do programming. Nor is it diminished by the fact that some of those folks, who only occasionally cobble together some code, call themselves programmers, too.

I think Ms. Hromic needs to take herself, and her profession, a lot less seriously. The best writers I've read seldom take themselves seriously. Sure, NaNoWriMo is virtually guaranteed to produce great piles of verbal offal. Lots of boring stories, googols of misspellings, and shiploads of grammatical errors. But so what? Some highly regarded published authors produce literary garbage.

Some people have a story, or several, inside and just need the impetus to get it out. Perhaps it will never go anywhere but on their own writing pad, typewriter or word processor. That's fine. But who is Ms. Hromic (or anyone else) to decide who is and isn't a writer?

[rysmiel.livejournal.com]

On the one hand, all that stuff about people maybe not being meant to be writers is toxic bilge, because there's really no way of finding out other than writing, outside of the extreme cases of people who are clearly visibly not up to handling sharp objects and so on. I'd sooner have a thousand obnoxious no-talents churn out their rubbish than one real talent be put off by well-poisoning like this.

On the other hand, I'm right with her on that "aim low" thing, though I think that's a really poor way for the NaNoWriMo people to phrase that. I think that for most people, most of the time, it is easier to learn two write by trying less ambitious things and moving on to more ambitious things later; writing has a lot of different subskills, which not everyone can learn in the same way or at the same rate, and there's a lot to be said for exercises involving working to improve at a specific skill. I would encourage people to start with what works for them, but not by aiming to write 50,000 words of novel intending for it to be crap. I would encourage to aim as high as you can, but try to figure out whow high you can reasonably aim first, and if what you're writing is a calibration exercise for this, be honest with yourself about that. The vast majority of people who don't calibrate get nowhere, and the the few who do succeed turn into producers of endless masses of bilge like Anne Rice.

It's not trivialising anyone's vocation to take a first step, or a second or a third, so long as you acknowledge that it is a first step or second or third.

[snippy]

I infer she feels threatened by the implication that she is not better than those of us who don't write real novels.

[undauntra.livejournal.com]

When I read the article, I thought that she had no sense of humor.

Then I read the letters to the editor in response, and I realized that she has a point. Not all of them, nor even a majority, but some few of the letters were indeed snide attacks on published writers. The original concept of NaNoWriMo is all in good fun, and is not intended maliciously -- a point which I believe Ms. Hromic has missed. In looking at the responses to her article though, I realized that she's not the only person who has missed the humor. There really are NaNoWriMo participants who think that mocking published writers is a good thing to do, and that NaNoWriMo is the way to do it. If she has encountered such treatment from NaNoWriMo participants before the article was written, I can well understand her viewpoint.

Some people just suck.

[eleccham.livejournal.com]

The problem is, the following meta-sentence is just as true:

"There really are   activity   participants who think that mocking   group of people   is a good thing to do, and that   activity   is the way to do it."

And it's just as bad a mindset as a meta-statement as the original was... and there are always people who will still do it. Screw 'em.

[kathrynt.livejournal.com]

I think NaNoWriMo is designed to help break through the perfection/paralysis block that many novice writers have. If you're terrified of producing crap, you won't produce anything. By consciously embracing the idea of producing crap and by emphasizing quality over quantity, thereby coming at the idea through the back door, I think it gives people permission to *practice* writing.

IOW, writing a crap novel in a month isn't a substitute for taking months or years to write a good novel. It's a substitute for sitting around wishing you were a writer.

[pocketnaomi.livejournal.com]

It sounds like she's conflating a bunch of different things, some of which she has the right to be pissed off about, some of which just don't sound like her business.

It does no harm whatsoever to the professional novelist to have other people write. Either a given novel produced by the NaNoWriMo effort will be good enough to publish or it won't. If it is, it deserves the same consideration that any other good novel deserves, and for the same reasons, and its origins are irrelevant. If it isn't, and mostly it won't be, then it does nothing besides sit in the author's drawer, which is certainly no skin off the pros' backs.

However, a lot of the language she quotes from the publicity for NaNoWriMo, especially the parts about mocking "real novelists" and excluding anyone who's too serious about their writing, rub me the wrong way too. I've got nothing against the effort -- I'd probably have participated in it if I hadn't been sapped of energy this fall -- but why do they have to advertise it so... sleazily? Why encourage people to make fun of serious writers who put longer efforts into better work? What possible good can it do for *either* the pros or the NaNoWriMo people to focus on comparing themselves to the other instead of simply acknowledging that they're doing somewhat different things for different reasons and there's nothing wrong with either if you don't expect it to be the other?

[browngirl.livejournal.com]

However, a lot of the language she quotes from the publicity for NaNoWriMo, especially the parts about mocking "real novelists" and excluding anyone who's too serious about their writing, rub me the wrong way too.

I see what you mean here. I think that part of it is context--they seem to me to be trying to echo the internal thoughts of the person who reads this and thinks, "but what if all I write is crap??" and part is, oh, I dunno, cutting down tall poppiees, maybe. I don't endorse that rhetoric, either.
But I don't think it's at the *core* of this activity. Writing50K words, enjoying the sweet torment (hand-staple-forehead), and being part of a community of folks who are doing this, that's the core, as I see it.

[tactisle.livejournal.com]

Okay, so I'm not a professional fiction writer. I haven't made a penny on writing fiction since I won $20 from a local newspaper in a children's horror-story contest back in junior high. (let's not talk about the user-guides I write in my current job; they're not real writing.)

It sounds to me like her first mistake is in taking the NNWM people's sales pitch so personally. It's a game. If you're a homicide detective for the local PD and happen to be at a Halloween party where someone drags out a copy of How to Host a Murder, do you damn everyone for ghoulish dilletantes who only cheapen your noble calling through their mockery and storm out the door, or do you find some other way to react?

NaNoWriMo is like an air-guitar contest for people who prefer reading to rocking. And like air-guitar, there's a possibility that some hidden narrative genius that's been lurking under a seemingly dull schlub's overdeveloped superego or self-censorship complex might find voice, and make that person go farther with it. Write three more crappy novels, then a fourth that isn't so crappy, go to a writing workshop or two, and maybe even *gasp!* submit it to a publisher!

Harlan Ellison used to play tricks like writing a story during a radio show, taking ideas from callers. Or writing a story in the front window of a bookstore, and auctioning it off at the end of the week. And frankly, some of those stories show it. He put out a lot of crap doing that. And some amazing words that couldn't have happened in less chaotic and pants-seatish environments. Heinlein, the alpha-robber-baron of SciFi himself, always claimed that he became a writer as a way to avoid honest work. Writing isn't a privilege, silly! Popularity is a privilege. Critical acclaim is a privilege. Being remembered by posterity is a privilege.

NaNoWriMo won't give you those things. Not by itself. The author of that essay is right on that score; you need to pay some dues if you want the brass ring.

Which is why the caricaturist only makes you look small if you're small already.

[cheshyre]

I'll confess, I'm posting without really reading the anti-Nano screed, because I just saw a similar sentiment to what you're saying on rasfc the other day. [Well, whaddayaknow; when I went back to get the link, I discovered it was by the same person.]

I wish I had my copy of Lawrence Block's book on novelwriting with me, but I don't, so I'm going to paraphrase. He pointed out that many famous authors wrote several unsalable novels before getting published. Does that make those early attempts worthless? Nonsense -- as practice and training, they were probably invaluable.

Block also compares writing a novel to running a marathon (with short stories as sprints). Not everybody will break records, but that doesn't mean people shouldn't try. Often the idea of writing a complete novel is an obstacle in and of itself, so if you can do it -- even with something unsalable -- you've still broken through that barrier, which will make the next one easier.

Two quotes from the book:

"I've observed that most of the people who start first novels never finish them, and I've come to believe that actually seeing a book through to the finish line is the most important thing you can do in your first essay at the novel."

from my blog, last month

"If you've written a novel, you're already a winner. Whether you try to publish it, whether you succeed or fail in your efforts, you've run a marathon and finished on your feet. Congratulations."

from this site

I also just finished Stephen King's On Writing which seems to express similar sentiments. [He kept all his rejection letters until his first sale -- first hanging from a nail above his desk, then (when they grew too heavy) from a spike. He doesn't see those as wasted effort.]

Don't let a stranger's disapproval hold so much weight with you. You want to write it; NaNoWriMo is assisting with tools and support; Just go, girl!

What's she afraid of?

[mama-hogswatch.livejournal.com]

I do not see that NaNoWriMo is any more of a threat to the professional writer than the internet was (i.e. none at all).

I do not feel trivilaized because someone wants to spend a month writing a novel. Anne Rice did it with Interview with a Vampire (okay, it took her six weeks).

Do professional musicians feel threatened when dillatantes get togeter and jam or even put on a concert or two. No, they do not.

Bleh. That author is just insecure.

Anyone CAN be a writer. All it takes it continuously going to the muse and DOING IT. You can't fake skill, talent, ability, drive or a willingness to work on the craft. So, I do not see NaNoWriMo as a threat. I see it as an encouragement for an aspiring writer to TRY.

It seems to me...

[dhs.livejournal.com]

... that if you want to write, that's cool. And if you want to set yourself the deadline of writing it all in November to push yourself into making time for it, that's cool. But you don't strike me as the type of person who wants to write crap, so perhaps NaNoWriMo is not the venue for you.

Re: It seems to me...

[browngirl.livejournal.com]

I think that one reason they say that is to get through to those who think "but what if I write crap, not Deathless Prose?", to tell them/us that it's OK if what we write isn't deathless prose.

December is for revisions, after all. ;)

Besides, it's fun to be part of a mass insanity. :D

okay, my $.02

[otherdeb.livejournal.com]

First, I am a published short story writer, just so that's out in the open.

I think NaNoWriMo is a perfectly fine outlet for those who wish to hone their skills. nd I think that it's nothing pro writer should feel threatened by. I have many friends who are taking part in it, and don't think any less of them for it. And anyone who writes a novel is a novelist. Maybe not a published novelist, but a novelist, nonetheless.

Besides, it's for fun, and for kickstarting your own writing, so ignore anyone who gives you grief about it.

Ny, in other words, "Go for it, girl!"

[papersky.livejournal.com]

What nrivkis and rysmiel said.

You're a writer if you write, you're a professional writer if you're paid for what you write.

I'm a professional writer.

I think NaNoWriMo is getting a lot of people to actually write, as opposed to imagining they will write one day when they have enough time.

I hate people posing. But I know a lot of writers and they don't go to parties and say posey things. I also know a fair number of NaNoWriMo people, and they don't either.

[Unknown site tag] and I jointly own a glass klein bottle. It came with instructions which include the line "For best results, avoid doing stupid things".

[sdelmonte]

This woman strikes me as a total snob, a self-involved Writer who thinks that the masses should be discouraged from even trying to be at all creative, as well as someone who thinks that creativity needs months to develop. Guess she would hate someone with the actual talent to hammer out a first draft of a novel in a month under any situation.

[cellio]

Disclosure: I rarely (intenionally) write fiction, but I am a writer.

I agree with nrivkis: NaNoWriNo is no threat to professional writers (or the profession), but the NaNoWriNo people did say some awfully stupid things in their promotion.

But there is an aspect of the NaNoWriNo approach that puzzles me. Their emphasis is on getting a first draft -- crap to be sure, but a complete draft sans editing nonetheless -- written so that, presumably, you can proceed to refining it. But is that the way people write? It's not the way I write, but I'm just one person. My first draft never sparkles, but it's never crap either; I edit along the way, and again when I have something reasonably solid. My edit filter is always on; I don't leave bad writing to fix later. I might, on the other hand, leave sentences like "[discuss such-and-such here]" for later; I don't necessarily start at the beginning and go to the end.

As a benchmark, this comment is written at about my "acceptable first draft" level; I fixed a few typos and one bad sentence construction that tried to slip in, but I haven't done any more editing than that. And I inserted my disclosure, the first line of the comment, about halfway through writing this.

Circular blogging

[cheshyre]

Their emphasis is on getting a first draft -- crap to be sure, but a complete draft sans editing nonetheless -- written so that, presumably, you can proceed to refining it. But is that the way people write?

How amusing. I just blogged about this thread. Part of my post deals with an article in which other professional writers take on Stephen King's On Writing, which in turn seems relevant to your question.

Quoting myself:

One of the many nuggets of advice contained in On Writing is to do a first draft, put the bad boy in a drawer for six weeks, and then take it out and read it again. King notes, however, that this method, while it works for him is not universal; some authors write and revise a page until it is right, then proceed to the next page, and so on. What do you do?

Interestingly enough, most of the authors admire the sentiment, and agree at least somewhat with the intentions behind it. They do some revision during the first draft, but mostly seem to separate the act of writing from the act of editing, using the first draft to move forward more than they look back.

Follow the link to read their full responses, but does that answer your question at all?

Re: Circular blogging

[cellio]

Thanks for sharing that. One of the responses pointed out a factor that hadn't occurred to me before, and it would seem to make a difference: the novel writer doesn't necessarily know how the story is going to turn out when he sits down to write it. While this is broadly true of non-fiction writing as well, the uncertainties are more about presentation than content. For example, half-way through writing a manual I might decide that there's a better order in which to present things, and that means I'll have to go back and change some of the set-up writing I did at the beginning. Sometimes I do that on the spot (if it's simple), and other times I log it for later.

Best/Worst Writing

[mama-hogswatch.livejournal.com]

I tend to self edit as I write as well.

This has its good and bad points. For someone who is paralzyed by trying to make it all come out right on the first draft, I think NaNoWriMo is a very, very good exercise.

I would be unlikely to use the exercise for a professional piece with a market already interested, but I would, indeed use such a method to get the bloody first draft OUT on a novel that I just seem to be stalling on. I've never written fiction professionally, either! But I did complete a novel in about three months by giving myself a word count of 2,000 words a day and sticking that. < grin > It was finished about ten years ago. It still is not sold. < shrug >

[maedbh7.livejournal.com]

The thing is, the NaNoWriMo folks state up front first thing, if you want to be taken seriously in your craft, don't do NaNoWriMo. If Hromi The Humorless wants to be taken seriously in her craft, then she shouldn't be involved in NNWM, at which point it's rather silly for her to get up in arms in this fashion about NNWM.

On the other hand, she has a point about serious novelists being trivialized throughtout the NNWM FAQs. And while I think the trivialization was meant in good humor, it's still in poor taste. Thus, the NNWM folks should consider rewording their faqs.

As to serious writers not being welcome to participate...yes, I see that the FAQ says that. I'm still 100% certain that if Steven King chose to write 50,000 words and submit them, noone would turn him down. -H...

Another professional writer's opinion

[cheshyre]

From Neil Gaiman's journal, last October:

And about fifty people have asked me to plug, or just wanted to know what I thought, about National Novel Writing month. The object of which is to write a 50,000 word novel in a month, on which getting to the finish line is more important than the content. I think it's a great idea -- anything that makes people who want to be writers write is a good idea. It's too easy to let your life slip away, convinced that all you need to be a writer is an idea. In reality, what you need to do is put one word after the other until you're done, with all the work and pain and triumph involved.

Chuck Jones told would be artists to draw, explaining that "you've got a million bad drawings inside you and the sooner you get them out, the better". Raymond Chandler is reputed to have told would be authors that they have a million words of crap to get out of their system. And in both cases there's a lot of truth there -- if only because it allows you to keep going despite your technical limitations and inability to get the words or the pen to do what you want, and eventually find yourself, well, competent. And some of the words and pictures you turn out on the way can be pretty good too.

[patgreene.livejournal.com]

My church has a music school for children and adults. I was talking to the rector one day about it, and he talked about how music had become something people consumed (i.e., listened to) instead of performed, and that there was this prevailing social opinion that unless you could sing (or play) at least at a semi-professional level you should just not bother. Part of the reason for the music school, he said, was to allow people to reclaim performing music as a source of joy to themselves.

I think NaNoWriMo has the possiblity of doing the same for writing -- for allowing us to experience writing again the same way maybe we did when we were growing up and didn't worry about being "good enough".

My twelve year old is currently writing a "novel" (I haven't told him about NaNoWriMo because he would get so involved in it he would neglect his schoolwork.) He has a few thousand words written. Is it at all good? No. Is it really a novel? No. Am I delighted he's doing it? Yes, because I think the practice writing is good for him -- it allows him to develop a voice. And here and there I see glimpses of a his take on the world. (My favorite sentence so far: "The boys went to the movie not because it was good but because it was bad -- there is nothing quite so satisfying in its own way as sitting and staring at a screen and saying "This sucks" every few minutes for two hours.") When he gets older he can take writing classes -- right now I just want him to feel free to experiment, the same way that kids play with crayons and fingerpaint before they learn to produce "art".

Is what my son doing demeaning to "professional novelists"? Like hell. And neither is NaNoWriMo.

[thespian.livejournal.com]

you know, your 'favourite sentence' (which is a delight), sounds like it's straight out of a Nick Hornby novel (which is a good and promising thing).

Good luck to him.

[redaxe.livejournal.com]

Several people beat me to particular points. To quickly rehash them: writers write, regardless of whether what they write is paid for, or even read, by others. And that this seems to be the point of NaNoWriMo, despite its perhaps overly sarcastic jabs at professional writers. And that lots of people don't want to write, they want to have written -- and NaNoWriMo provides a focus and a goal, both of which help lots of people get past -- or at least, get started on -- that otherwise nebulous desire.

What Ms. Hromic's attitude reminds me of most is the RIAA/Big Music attitude: that Art belongs in the hands of Artists, and that those of us not privileged to belong to the Inner Circle and get paid for dispensing our wisdom possess any right to participate on any creative level whatever. And that all the folks we all know, who make music as amateurs or on small labels, are Morally Unjustified In Their Endeavors, And Shall Freeze In Hell For Them.

Feh.

I have to go rinse out my metaphorical mouth. Even describing that attitude tastes foul. Time to pick up the guitar and finish the song I have been putting off, because I wanted to have written it rather than doing the work of writing. ;-)

[ohiblather.livejournal.com]

I participated in NaNoWriMo last year. I'm a full-time freelance writer with a published book (with Writer's Digest Books) , a bunch of paid magazine articles, some fiction (co-wrote a short story with Michelle Sagara West, appears in a DAW fantasy collection next year), even a bit of poetry. I have a literary agent at Curtis Brown Ltd in New York.

The site blurb for NaNoWriMo is obviously tongue-in-cheek; I never took it as an insult to to professional writers...found it amusing, in fact. I had great fun with NaNoWriMo, got a rough draft of a fantasy novel which I plan to submit to my agent (got waylaid by my tendinitis) after editing. I also interviewed a wide range of writers for an article about NaNoWriMo last year... all of them participated because they needed a kickstart of some kind in their writing. I followed up with them a month ago, and none of them regretted it.

Debbie

[supergee.livejournal.com]

Ms. Hromic is concerned with who gets to wear the Novelist badge. Perhaps she wishes to start Novelist Protection Week.

[thette.livejournal.com]

leeneh was enraged by that article, and wrote a good piece (http://www.livejournal.com/users/leeneh/277025.html) about it.