For those of you unfamiliar with that term, it stands for National Novel Writing Month. It is a personal challenge for writers to write a 50k novel in 30 days.
Crazy, I know.
The point is not to produce a quality novel, it is simply to produce. To write. And this is something I so desperately needed right now. It forced me to finish revisions I'd been dragging my feet on so I could start something new. Something I'd been excited about for a long time but not started because of aforementioned unfinished project.
You must be asking yourself, what's the point of writing trash? Like I said, the point is simply to write, but also, with revision, your work can go from trash to treasure. I wrote Never Eighteen during the 2008 NaNoWriMo and look where it is now. In fact they have a whole section on published NaNo works (disclaimer: I have no idea if these are self or traditionally published novel and therefore cannot speak for the quality of said novels).
Are you NaNoing this year? If so, how many words in are you? What are you writing about? What's your NaNo handle?
I'm just over 10k (this is sure to slow down now), I'm writing YA fantasy, Here's my profile if you want to buddy up.
I love NaNo. I agree you can take the trash to treasure, though for me, in a rush, I also put in fewer tangents, so it is almost cleaner. But I ALSO love it as a deadline to get a revision done and as an excuse to my family that I AM BUSY WRITING. If I tried that year round, they wouldn't put up with it, but twice a year, they can cope.
ReplyDeleteyes, once or twice a year is not bad. My kids know what I'm doing.So far so good. I'm being diligent, unlike in April. I'm off to a good start.
ReplyDeleteThose novels on the Nano site are traditionally published (there've been threads about that...) so at least someone somewhere thought the books were good enough an investment. I'm looking forward to your next work. I enjoyed Never Eighteen and have passed it on several times to friends since I got it. Good luck with Nano!
ReplyDeleteThanks so much Shannon. I appreciate you spreading the word, the book promotion is one of the hardest things about being a writer.
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