Fast Drafting, The Inner Critic, and NaNo - Or, Why I Keep Writing Like Mad
Do you NaNo? People that do, look at me with mild panic right about now because NOVEMBER 1ST IS IN TEN DAYS. People that don't have this expression of mild pity, as though I were mad.
I don't have the heart to tell them, I am mad. (We're all mad here?)
So. What the heck is NaNo and why should we care?
Every year in the month of November, it's National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo. The founders describe it as "a month of literary abandon." The objective is simple: Between November 1st at midnight to November 30th at eleven-fifty-nine on the clock, local time, write fifty thousand words. 50,000. 50k. FIFTY THOUSAND. Fiiiiiifffffty thousand. Fi'ty thou'.
Fifty Thousand Words. In the month of November.
Why?
Good question.
Here's why: those of us who want to be writers, who want to write novels, do a lot of dreaming, talking, wishing, visioning, noodling, and trying. We might have a draft stashed in a drawer somewhere, or languishing on a hard drive. In the cloud. In our heads. (That's even worse, because then we carry it around with us where it can mock us. Daily. Everywhere. Even in line at Starbucks.) (Especially in line at Starbucks.) So Chris Baty, the founder of NaNo, decided to egg a bunch of his friends on to put their keyboards where their mouths were, and write a draft of a novel. The catch?
Do it in 30 days.
What he, and they, and now we Wrimos, have discovered is this: when you write that fast, you evade the internal censor. The inner critic. You know, that voice of your parent/fifth grade grammar teacher/friends/the guy in the line at Starbucks, all of whom say, "You're writing a novel?" and then proceed to tell you all the reasons why it won't work: it's already been done; there are only seven plots, so there's no point because all the stories have been told already; you can't write because you're an _____; you flunked English class, who are you to think you're Hemingway; etc. etc. ad nauseum infinitum.
Do it anyway.
If I've learned anything doing NaNo, it's this: when you're so busy writing, every day, to hit your word count, (which if you divide 50,000 by 30 is 1,667 words a day), you don't have time to listen to the dude in the line at Starbucks, or your grammar teacher, or anybody but the blessed voice of your novel. Your critic will jump up and down in your mind, trying to tell you that you're a fool, but what the hell - throw him in the novel too! (Then kill him in various and inventive ways, on paper. Much cheaper than hiring a lawyer to keep yourself out of Sing Sing.)
At the end of November, you will find that you have something that never existed before: the first draft of YOUR novel. You have become, young padawan, a novelist.
And that, Dear Reader, is why I NaNo. What about you?
Find me at NaNo:
A. Catherine Noon
2nd Year Municipal Liaison
Chicago Region (If you're near the Chicagoland, join us for our Kick-Off Party this Sunday, 10/25/2015, at Geek Bar!)
6 attemps | 4 wins
On NaNo as: a.catherine.noon
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--
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