NaNoWriMo and Patrick Rothfuss
I headed over to Pat's blog, where he wrote an interesting post on NaNoWriMo (http://blog.patrickrothfuss.com/2011/11/fanmail-faq-nanowrimo/), and it got me thinking about how I've thought of the month in the past.
I found it interesting that in his earlier mind NaNoWriMo wasn't for "real" writers--people who write all year round. For some reason, I've never thought of it this way. I doubt that most NaNoWriMo 50,000 words go on to be novels, or even the early buds of a novel intended for publishing. What it does do, I feel, is teach you the dicipline you'll need if you want to finish a novel. It shows you how much you have to spew out on a daily (or weekly) basis in order to realistically have enough material to do a true edit and revision. I can tell you now that the month that forces you to write out 50,000 words by the end of it is not a way to create a polished product. Most of the time, the focus MUST be on just getting through it. The scene doesn't work? Eh, work around it for the moment. You feel like you moved past a scene too fast because you know what happens next better than you know what happened before? Plow ahead!
The point of NaNoWriMo for me is that, as Patrick Rothfuss says, kick in the pants to get something down on paper. I've been tossing this idea around in my head for 8 months. I've never set even the beginning down on the computer. Oh, sure, I've written down some plot concepts here and there in a notebook, and even thought things through like some backstory of characters and the like. But, actually starting the story? Nope. Not a word. That's what NaNoWriMo does. It says to you, "Look. You have to have A story to write. Pick one and start setting it down."
My choice of story was "Rapunzel: A Retelling" (though working title is currently "The Tower") because it's the only one I can see realistically finishing. I don't mean that 50,000 words is all this story needs. I'm saying that 50,000 words will be the better part of the story and that getting through it will be beneficial, and actually leave me with something I can use to actually complete a novel. I have written, I discovered, more than 50,000 words of a story before. Actually, I've written more than 100,000 words before. And the story is barely half-way through what I think of as "the first book." That's why I chose Rapunzel. I can get 100k out and still not feel like I'm near finishing, and that I should continue to put significant energy into the work to finish it and seek a publisher. But, I feel that 100k should be sufficient for this story. 50k puts me a at least halfway done.
So, for anyone else out there who has thought that they wanted to write something, I'd suggest NaNoWriMo. I wouldn't suggest using it to jump start a massive project though. In this regard, I share Rothfuss' early disdain for NaNoWriMo. An aspiring author with a 250k story for the "first book" won't benefit the same way from NaNoWriMo. Why? Because this is a fast pace, throw whatever you have at the wall kind of writing--and like the difference between sprinting 500 yards and running a 50 mile marathon, this is the kind of writing pace that will burn you out. You can twist your story into a knot so serious that it takes deleting 30k just to get it back on track again. Still, anyone who hasn't ever written that much of a story before should definitely do NaNoWriMo. It shows you how much that kind of amount of story is, and what you can do with it. And most importantly:
YOU WRITE SOMETHING.
I found it interesting that in his earlier mind NaNoWriMo wasn't for "real" writers--people who write all year round. For some reason, I've never thought of it this way. I doubt that most NaNoWriMo 50,000 words go on to be novels, or even the early buds of a novel intended for publishing. What it does do, I feel, is teach you the dicipline you'll need if you want to finish a novel. It shows you how much you have to spew out on a daily (or weekly) basis in order to realistically have enough material to do a true edit and revision. I can tell you now that the month that forces you to write out 50,000 words by the end of it is not a way to create a polished product. Most of the time, the focus MUST be on just getting through it. The scene doesn't work? Eh, work around it for the moment. You feel like you moved past a scene too fast because you know what happens next better than you know what happened before? Plow ahead!
The point of NaNoWriMo for me is that, as Patrick Rothfuss says, kick in the pants to get something down on paper. I've been tossing this idea around in my head for 8 months. I've never set even the beginning down on the computer. Oh, sure, I've written down some plot concepts here and there in a notebook, and even thought things through like some backstory of characters and the like. But, actually starting the story? Nope. Not a word. That's what NaNoWriMo does. It says to you, "Look. You have to have A story to write. Pick one and start setting it down."
My choice of story was "Rapunzel: A Retelling" (though working title is currently "The Tower") because it's the only one I can see realistically finishing. I don't mean that 50,000 words is all this story needs. I'm saying that 50,000 words will be the better part of the story and that getting through it will be beneficial, and actually leave me with something I can use to actually complete a novel. I have written, I discovered, more than 50,000 words of a story before. Actually, I've written more than 100,000 words before. And the story is barely half-way through what I think of as "the first book." That's why I chose Rapunzel. I can get 100k out and still not feel like I'm near finishing, and that I should continue to put significant energy into the work to finish it and seek a publisher. But, I feel that 100k should be sufficient for this story. 50k puts me a at least halfway done.
So, for anyone else out there who has thought that they wanted to write something, I'd suggest NaNoWriMo. I wouldn't suggest using it to jump start a massive project though. In this regard, I share Rothfuss' early disdain for NaNoWriMo. An aspiring author with a 250k story for the "first book" won't benefit the same way from NaNoWriMo. Why? Because this is a fast pace, throw whatever you have at the wall kind of writing--and like the difference between sprinting 500 yards and running a 50 mile marathon, this is the kind of writing pace that will burn you out. You can twist your story into a knot so serious that it takes deleting 30k just to get it back on track again. Still, anyone who hasn't ever written that much of a story before should definitely do NaNoWriMo. It shows you how much that kind of amount of story is, and what you can do with it. And most importantly:
YOU WRITE SOMETHING.