Anna Butler here with (for once!) a monthly post that lines up with the calendar. Five days to go, and for the zillioneth year in succession, I’ve done nothing to prepare for NaNoWriMo. What a surprise that isn’t.
I think about it every year, mind you. Somewhere round about August the merest whisper of thought tentatively takes a step forward in preparation for considering crossing my mind with the notion that maybe this will be the year where I sign up and use the juggernaut of NaNo to force my lazy brain into working for its living.
And every year, I remember why I don’t do NaNo and the thought dies unborn.
I’m not in the least motivated by winning badges, you see—if I were, I’d never have been told: “You’re not really Brownie and Girl Guide material, dear.” The criticism crushed me when I was twelve, but I was over it before I hit thirteen. So proclaiming to the world that I churned out 50k words in a month isn’t a motivator for me. I don’t consider it a badge of honour.
A community of writers is a nice thing on occasion, but not essential to my daily writing life. I’m happy meeting my community at UKMeet or EuroPrideCon, but I don’t need to be embraced by them every day for a month. In fact, the older I get the more introverted I am, and the thought of being ‘on’ and peppy and enthusiastic with people for an entire 30-day stretch, even if that’s mostly online, is more than enough to slam writer’s block down over my fingers so hard it breaks nails.
And then there’s the thought of failure. Stuff happens. Stuff stops you writing. It’s known as Life, and it has a habit of sticking its foot out to trip you up when you aren’t looking. I don’t need to set myself unrealistic goals to feel I’ve failed. I can do that all on my own.
But most of all, I don’t like the rules. I really don’t like being told that to win I must write 50,000 words in November, aiming for 1667 words a day. For me, 50k words are barely half a novel anyway—pokes dispiritedly at current WIP and wonders why I never do concise—but even if I decided to embrace NaNo, the emphasis put on word count is, I think, pernicious. It’s as though the quality of the words doesn’t matter when there’s mere quantity to be had. Indeed, mere quantity is the goal. Just get let those words loose! Grind them out, get them written. Check your progress on the handy-dandy wordcount meter. It’s bloody relentless.
Slamming out those words is all well and good, but what about world-building? Or plotting? Or good, sharp compelling characterisation? All those things take thought and consideration, passion and heart. I’m not saying that the latter two are lost in NaNo, but the uncompromising drive to pop out words is not going to allow for much of the first two. You must have to do that in advance and be ready to sail through the opening gates with your book already planned and plotted, so all you have to do is write it. I get that.
But here’s the point: in that case, what’s so ruddy different about NaNo? If you plot and plan and world-build in advance, and then start to write, how is that any different from writing at any other time of year? Why put yourself through the stresses of trying to ‘win’ when there’s no essential difference to how the usual writing process except in that bloody relentless pressure to wear the letters off the keys on your keyboards? Any month can be your personal NaNo. Every month can!
So, all things considered, NaNo is not for me. A book takes as long as it takes, and no amount of outside pressure to write it will speed that process along. At least for me. Your mileage may be on a completely different odometer.
If so, if you’re going to do NaNo, good luck to you! I hope you achieve everything you set out to do and the resultant book rocks planets.
Meanwhile, I’ll keep plodding along here at my own pace. The Girl Guide uniform never suited me anyway.
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About Anna
Anna was a communications specialist for many years, working in various UK government departments on everything from marketing employment schemes to organizing conferences for 10,000 civil servants to running an internal TV service. These days, though, she is writing full time. She lives with her husband in a quiet village tucked deep in the Nottinghamshire countryside. She’s supported there by the Deputy Editor, aka Molly the cockerpoo, who is assisted by the lovely Mavis, a Yorkie-Bichon cross with a bark several sizes larger than she is but no opinion whatsoever on the placement of semi-colons.
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