Share your words, songs, secrets, or paintings—there is no need to be ashamed of what you create with your heart.
Do you have a book growing inside of you? Perhaps you should see a doctor? Or maybe you are one of the 4 out of 5 Americans who believe they have a book to write.
While is high, maybe it’s actually low. Perhaps all of us have a story to tell or none of us do at all. Being currently in Iceland, the most literary place on earth, where one out of every ten citizens will publish a book in their lifetime, it does not seem so farfetched to imagine that at some point in our eight or so decades of life, we should all at least attempt it.
If you subconsciously nodded at that last sentence, then the timing is perfect for you to begin that first sentence. This coming month finds us in National Novel Writing Month, NaNoWriMo, which in addition to being one of the most unwieldy abbreviations out there, is a time when everyone who has been procrastinating writing that novel are supposed to do it. In one month. I have never actually participated in NaNoWriMo, I always feel like I should. Every year when I see people posting their progress on Facebook and Twitter, I get that left-out syndrome and declare from the top of my chair that “Next year, I will do this!”
Life always seems to give me a satisfying excuse. This time around it is because I will be dashing around six countries in November, working on non-fiction book, trying to get an existing novel published and, oh shit, doing the less glamorous writing that makes me money so I can eat, afford a bed, and buy plane tickets and new underpants.
Depending on my mood, I am both anti and pro NaNoWriMo. NanoWriMo is the lose 15 pounds in 7 days for writers. Here are the pros and cons of NaNoWriMo as I see them. The good side of of NaNoWriMo, is like the goodside of Dr. Phil (come on, guys, yes he’s annoying, but he just wants to help people), while the Darth Vader side is filled with the smarm of a gelled hair get-rich-quick
Pro: It turns writing into a social activity.
Don’t be a writer inside of a vacuum. It’s dusty and smells like dumpster in there. Writing, though it requires solitude, is also a social activity in the endgame. NaNoWriMo is great because thousands of people across the world, people you know on Facebook and follow on Twitter and see in coffee shops are all doing it. It makes writing exciting because it turns what you are working on into a shared conversation. You need co-conspirators in your writing crime who can read something and offer more than a yawning-useless “It’s great” or “It’s horrible” and NaNoWriMo offers this.
Con: It’s too good to be true
There are those writers who are so disciplined and prolific (like Stephen King) who somehow write like four novels a year. People like this are not actually human. They are writing robots sent from outer space to frustrate us mere mortals. The NaNoWriMo plan promises that you will finish a novel in one month. It offers writers an easy out to the fact that they have done little to develop their craft the other eleven months of the year. It’s true, if you are really disciplined you might be able to churn out 50,000 words in a month, but most of writing is re-writing, and this takes months, sometimes years.
I remember once when a friend who wanted to be a writer invited me to coffee to pick my brain. “What was the last thing you wrote?” I asked.
“Oh,” she said, “I haven’t written really anything in like a year.” Well, she had an uphill battle, and Bukowski was onto something when he wrote, “if it doesn’t come bursting out of you in spite of everything, don’t do it
Pro: It teaches writing discipline
Stephen King, even though he’s a robot, had good advice, that if you want to be a writer, you should be churning out at least 2,000 words a day. Every day. Until you die or develop carpel tunnel syndrome. Desire to be a writer must coincide with hard work, and NaNoWriMo shows aspiring writers what that battle feels like day in day out.
Con: It forgets the journey
A marathon is not run on race day. It is run months and sometimes a year before. It is run on the days when all you want to do is sit in bed and re-watch the first season of Game of Thrones and eat Pringles, but instead of doing that, you drag your Pringle-loving ass outside and get a five-mile run in. So too writing. NaNoWriMo advocates the marathon without the training. Ask Barney Stinson how that worked for him.
The Pros Probably Outweigh the Cons
Something about NaNoWriMo has always made me a little uncomfortable. But it’s getting people who otherwise would not be writing to write a lot, so this has to be a good thing. Whether you are a pro or amateur, writing is one of those wonderful ways we express ourselves. Let’s not hoard ourselves from the world: Share your words, songs, secrets, or paintings—there is no need to be ashamed of what you create with your heart. If like me you’ve always wanted to participate, but haven’t, maybe this is your year. You will certainly learn things about yourself and grow your craft in the process.
NaNoWriMo has also encouraged some cool projects. Grammarly, those ads you see all over the Internet which offer proof-reading and plagiarism detection, is using it to put together a “book that boasts the largest number of authors of any novel ever written,” further turning writing into a fun social affair.
As with a lot of things (heroin being one of the many exceptions) if it feels good, makes you happy and encourages you to get up and do something you want to do but never have, then do it and get on the NaNoWriMo band wagon.
