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.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2003-10-22 11:36 am (UTC)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.