NaNo is stupid and ugly. Also fat and smelly, and its mother dresses it funny.
So, this person I've never heard of even though her 'About' section makes her sound really important has decided that NaNoWriMo is a waste of time, and has decided to write about it in a particularly condescending and unpleasant way.
I've done NaNo three times in the past. It's fun, or it's meant to be. It's not meant to be a method by which Great and Significant Works of Art are brought into the world. From what I recall of the original NaNo handbook, there was a lot of emphasis on first-time novelists and people who would never otherwise have written a book giving it a try, and experiencing the joy of having created something that most people never create. The novel-in-a-month thing gives it a skydiving-like rush. It's crazy, which is part of its appeal.
A lot of crap gets written during NaNo. No disputing that. Hell, my NaNo novels will probably never see the light of day, and it's probably for the best that way. And I agree with her that mentioning that the novel that you have just submitted to an agent or publisher was your NaNo novel is probably not the best way to inspire confidence.
But she seems to have somehow come to the fucked-up and incorrect conclusion that the novel-writing of NaNo comes at the expense of novel reading. I believe her when she talks about how an acquaintance of hers has met people who want to write but do not read. I've met those people myself. I agree with her when she says that we should celebrate readers, though I am not sure readers are the dying breed she makes them out to be.
But overwhelmingly, the NaNo writers I know are readers. Overwhelmingly. There is no evidence, none, that NaNo is turning readers away from reading and making them into bad writers. She talks about taking up reading challenges in place of NaNo. I've done the 50 Book Challenge. I think it's fantastic.
Can she explain why reading and writing cannot coexist? Can she reasonably assert that they don't already?
As long as we're relying on anecdata for our authority, I've met a lot of professional writers who admit that they don't read. They focus on their writing. Yet here she is, scowling because when bad, unpublished writers do this, it's a waste of time they could be spending doing something she considers more valuable.
When this woman complains about NaNo, what she is really complaining about is bad writers; both amateur writers who write bad fiction and amateur writers who have bad manners. As an Important Publishing Person, she doesn't want to be bothered with these idiots. According to her, all the support should go to readers, whose job is to support "real" writers. I see her point, but picking on NaNo is petty and pointless. She cites the statistic that 21,683 people officially finished NaNo last year. In the grand scheme of things, stacked against the slushpile of shit that is already out there, being shipped to publishers unsolicited and by the ton, do 21,683 manuscripts really matter all that much? And the failed NaNo-ers, who according to her do not read? Are they really some terrible blight upon the publishing world, driving sales down?
Or could it be one or both of these facts:
1) Most people just don't value reading, and this is something that begins long before anyone ever considers whether they want to write or not.
2) People write and submit shitty fiction -- so much of it, in fact, that the amount produced by NaNo writers is hardly a drop in the bucket, and they will continue to do so even when NaNo dies.
Yes, I do occasionally find the NaNo push, the hype, to be tiresome. But people talked to me about their ideas and tried to get me to read their work before NaNo became a Thing. All NaNo seems to have done on that front is concentrate it in November and the months immediately after, and make it slightly more likely that the writer will admit that what they wrote was, in fact, crap, both of which are GOOD side-effects. More of my friends have written books because of it. I haven't read even the tenth part of these, and don't want to, but they are happy, and that makes me happy. I was not litter-trained to piss in other folks' Cheerios.
This woman misses the point of NaNo completely. She herself says she doesn't write novels. How the crap is she qualified to judge it, then? Does she understand what NaNo is really about? What it offers? Why it has become so popular? Does she know any participants? Has she spoken to even one participant in-depth about what they got out of it?
My take on it has always been that writing a book, telling a story, expressing yourself, is a good thing, whether the manner in which you do it has artistic value or not. And I was also taught that the creative impulse is not something reserved for the rarefied elite, something that should only be indulged by the beautiful people of the creative world. Scoffing at the fact that incompetent people feel the urge to write is like lamenting the fact that ugly people have sex. As long as nobody is making you look, you really have no right to be upset by the idea that this is going on. It's not about you.
The feeling of creating something is powerful. Everyone should get a chance to feel that, if they want it.
I'm not saying that all creative output is of equal worth. It's not. I am just saying that everyone should get a chance to feel that, if they want to, and that they shouldn't be told they should be ashamed because they aren't good at it. We dance and fuck and sing in the car because those things feel good, not because those are acts of mighty consequence. For most of us, they aren't. We seek joy. If this woman thinks that doing something that makes you feel extraordinary and happy and satisfied is a waste of time unless it meets her standards of value, well, that doesn't reflect very well on her, does it?
And if she wants to point the finger at "self-aggrandizing," she's looking in the wrong place. Very little is as self-aggrandizing as the professional publishing world, with its snotty insistence that there is a right and wrong way to write, a right and wrong reason to write, a right and wrong way to be published, with its constant sneering at genre work, with the genuinely fucked-up manner in which things like reprints and sequels and royalties and so forth are negotiated.
And for all that she lauds readers, who by definition require someone else to produce what they read, she doesn't seem to have much respect for writers in general:
So I'm not worried about all the books that won't get written if a hundred thousand people with a nagging but unfulfilled ambition to Be a Writer lack the necessary motivation to get the job done. I see no reason to cheer them on. Writers are, in fact, hellishly persistent; they will go on writing despite overwhelming evidence of public indifference and (in many cases) of their own lack of ability or anything especially interesting to say. Writers have a reputation for being tormented by their lot, probably because they're always moaning so loudly about how hard it is, but it's the readers who are fragile, a truly endangered species. They don't make a big stink about how underappreciated they are; like Tinkerbell or any other disbelieved-in fairy, they just fade away.
I don't even know where to begin describing what is wrong with this. It drips with condescension. The whole essay does, in fact. It's like she has no generosity left in her at all for people doing something that is perhaps annoying but, ultimately, doesn't actually affect her life at all.
It's just stupid.
Lady, if you don't like NaNo, fine, but don't be an asshole about it and blame shit on NaNo and NaNo-ers that are more properly the fault of our jacked-up culture. NaNo is a crappy bogeyman, and it's really kind of pathetic that you'd need one in the first place.
I've done NaNo three times in the past. It's fun, or it's meant to be. It's not meant to be a method by which Great and Significant Works of Art are brought into the world. From what I recall of the original NaNo handbook, there was a lot of emphasis on first-time novelists and people who would never otherwise have written a book giving it a try, and experiencing the joy of having created something that most people never create. The novel-in-a-month thing gives it a skydiving-like rush. It's crazy, which is part of its appeal.
A lot of crap gets written during NaNo. No disputing that. Hell, my NaNo novels will probably never see the light of day, and it's probably for the best that way. And I agree with her that mentioning that the novel that you have just submitted to an agent or publisher was your NaNo novel is probably not the best way to inspire confidence.
But she seems to have somehow come to the fucked-up and incorrect conclusion that the novel-writing of NaNo comes at the expense of novel reading. I believe her when she talks about how an acquaintance of hers has met people who want to write but do not read. I've met those people myself. I agree with her when she says that we should celebrate readers, though I am not sure readers are the dying breed she makes them out to be.
But overwhelmingly, the NaNo writers I know are readers. Overwhelmingly. There is no evidence, none, that NaNo is turning readers away from reading and making them into bad writers. She talks about taking up reading challenges in place of NaNo. I've done the 50 Book Challenge. I think it's fantastic.
Can she explain why reading and writing cannot coexist? Can she reasonably assert that they don't already?
As long as we're relying on anecdata for our authority, I've met a lot of professional writers who admit that they don't read. They focus on their writing. Yet here she is, scowling because when bad, unpublished writers do this, it's a waste of time they could be spending doing something she considers more valuable.
When this woman complains about NaNo, what she is really complaining about is bad writers; both amateur writers who write bad fiction and amateur writers who have bad manners. As an Important Publishing Person, she doesn't want to be bothered with these idiots. According to her, all the support should go to readers, whose job is to support "real" writers. I see her point, but picking on NaNo is petty and pointless. She cites the statistic that 21,683 people officially finished NaNo last year. In the grand scheme of things, stacked against the slushpile of shit that is already out there, being shipped to publishers unsolicited and by the ton, do 21,683 manuscripts really matter all that much? And the failed NaNo-ers, who according to her do not read? Are they really some terrible blight upon the publishing world, driving sales down?
Or could it be one or both of these facts:
1) Most people just don't value reading, and this is something that begins long before anyone ever considers whether they want to write or not.
2) People write and submit shitty fiction -- so much of it, in fact, that the amount produced by NaNo writers is hardly a drop in the bucket, and they will continue to do so even when NaNo dies.
Yes, I do occasionally find the NaNo push, the hype, to be tiresome. But people talked to me about their ideas and tried to get me to read their work before NaNo became a Thing. All NaNo seems to have done on that front is concentrate it in November and the months immediately after, and make it slightly more likely that the writer will admit that what they wrote was, in fact, crap, both of which are GOOD side-effects. More of my friends have written books because of it. I haven't read even the tenth part of these, and don't want to, but they are happy, and that makes me happy. I was not litter-trained to piss in other folks' Cheerios.
This woman misses the point of NaNo completely. She herself says she doesn't write novels. How the crap is she qualified to judge it, then? Does she understand what NaNo is really about? What it offers? Why it has become so popular? Does she know any participants? Has she spoken to even one participant in-depth about what they got out of it?
My take on it has always been that writing a book, telling a story, expressing yourself, is a good thing, whether the manner in which you do it has artistic value or not. And I was also taught that the creative impulse is not something reserved for the rarefied elite, something that should only be indulged by the beautiful people of the creative world. Scoffing at the fact that incompetent people feel the urge to write is like lamenting the fact that ugly people have sex. As long as nobody is making you look, you really have no right to be upset by the idea that this is going on. It's not about you.
The feeling of creating something is powerful. Everyone should get a chance to feel that, if they want it.
I'm not saying that all creative output is of equal worth. It's not. I am just saying that everyone should get a chance to feel that, if they want to, and that they shouldn't be told they should be ashamed because they aren't good at it. We dance and fuck and sing in the car because those things feel good, not because those are acts of mighty consequence. For most of us, they aren't. We seek joy. If this woman thinks that doing something that makes you feel extraordinary and happy and satisfied is a waste of time unless it meets her standards of value, well, that doesn't reflect very well on her, does it?
And if she wants to point the finger at "self-aggrandizing," she's looking in the wrong place. Very little is as self-aggrandizing as the professional publishing world, with its snotty insistence that there is a right and wrong way to write, a right and wrong reason to write, a right and wrong way to be published, with its constant sneering at genre work, with the genuinely fucked-up manner in which things like reprints and sequels and royalties and so forth are negotiated.
And for all that she lauds readers, who by definition require someone else to produce what they read, she doesn't seem to have much respect for writers in general:
So I'm not worried about all the books that won't get written if a hundred thousand people with a nagging but unfulfilled ambition to Be a Writer lack the necessary motivation to get the job done. I see no reason to cheer them on. Writers are, in fact, hellishly persistent; they will go on writing despite overwhelming evidence of public indifference and (in many cases) of their own lack of ability or anything especially interesting to say. Writers have a reputation for being tormented by their lot, probably because they're always moaning so loudly about how hard it is, but it's the readers who are fragile, a truly endangered species. They don't make a big stink about how underappreciated they are; like Tinkerbell or any other disbelieved-in fairy, they just fade away.
I don't even know where to begin describing what is wrong with this. It drips with condescension. The whole essay does, in fact. It's like she has no generosity left in her at all for people doing something that is perhaps annoying but, ultimately, doesn't actually affect her life at all.
It's just stupid.
Lady, if you don't like NaNo, fine, but don't be an asshole about it and blame shit on NaNo and NaNo-ers that are more properly the fault of our jacked-up culture. NaNo is a crappy bogeyman, and it's really kind of pathetic that you'd need one in the first place.