Are You Going to Fail NaNoWriMo?
It’s only November 8th and I’ve already heard a number of writers say they fear they are going to fail NaNoWriMo — meaning they won’t write 1,666.67 words a day and they won’t hit the 50,000-word mark at the end of the month and they won’t get the badge of honor and the jolt of confidence that comes from having nailed the big challenge.
The thing to remember is that National Novel Writing Month is an incredible gathering of writers, a fabulous energizing community celebrating the creative spirit, but it is also by its very design an exercise in writing fast — really fast.
NaNoWriMo is not alone in holding up fast as the way forward for writers. Many services offered to writers these days are all about fast.
Pitch Wars asks its writers to do an entire novel revision and pitch prep in three months.
The Self Publishing Academy suggests that its writers can “Go From Blank Page to Best Selling Author In As Little As 90 Days.”
The creative process doesn’t always unfold as fast as we would like it to.
The trouble with these services is that the creative process doesn’t always unfold as fast as we would like it to. Writing well often takes a great deal of time — to first learn the skills you need to pull it off, then to develop the practices and habits that lead toward success, and always to make room for the unexpected, because the creative process is nothing is not unexpected.
In the Los Angeles Times last week, novelist Ann Patchett spoke about her new book, The Dutch House:
Patchett’s latest novel emerged after she threw out the first draft after two years of writing.
“I made a mistake with the book,” she says. “It’s like driving someplace and you get on the wrong freeway, suddenly you’re in the San Fernando Valley and you wanted to get to Santa Barbara” — an analogy true to her L.A. roots.
“If this had happened to me at 25 or 30, I would have cried for two weeks,” she says. But at 55, she just got back on the right road.
“Because of the detour, it ended up being a better book.”
Patchett is talking about throwing out two years’ worth of work. This is a reality that I hear a vast majority of successful writers confess to — throwing pages out.
There is no NaNoWriMo for cutting 10,000 words from a book
There is no NaNoWriMo for cutting 10,000 words from a book or throwing out 300 pages (that would be 9.67 pages a day, BTW). It’s so unsexy, so unfun. But it’s also the work that almost all writers have to do.
There is absolutely a time and a place for going fast, including stepping up your per-day production rate as a writer. I am a big fan of Rachel Aaron’s book, 2,000 to 10,000 about how to write a whole lot faster every time you sit down to write. Her secret is to separate out the strategic thinking from the generative work of writing — a secret that underlies my own Inside Outline process.
But Aaron is a professional writer who makes her living writing books, and she is talking largely to other professional writers who wish to increase their rate of production so that they can deliver more books faster to a hungry fanbase, thereby pleasing their fans and making more money.
For most writers, especially those trying to get their first book into the world, or those changing directions, or those working on a book that has a tricky element that might take some trial and error, writing fast should not be the goal.
Writing well should be the goal.
Writing well should be the goal.
Finding the structure that will best support your idea should be the goal.
Finding your voice and your confidence and your way forward as a writer should be the goal.
There is much to be said for slow writing. Taking your time, tuning into your instincts, giving yourself room to breath — these are all very good things.
So if you are on track to fail NaNoWriMo, you might consider changing your perspective on it.
Set a different goal — to write 50,000-X number of words. Or to write three good chapters. Or to increase your average rate of production by, perhaps, 10%.
Use the energy of the community to inspire you and fire you up and remember that writing a lot of words that don’t add up to anything is no one’s idea of winning.
