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

[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 >