This week began #NaNoWriMo, which, for those of you not involved in the writing world, stands for National Novel Writing Month. During these thirty days, many novelists choose to take on the task of writing a novel draft of at least 50,000 words, producing 1,666 words a day, no small feat as the holidays approach (or any time of the year, for that matter). In the last week, I’ve seen countless excited tweets about trying it, as though the month were a race, the winner having produced the most words.
Obviously, it’s not a race, and NaNoWriMo is more than a mere challenge. It is actually an official 501(c)(3) nonprofit, helping nearly 800,000 ‘active novelists’ reach their goals and documenting almost half a million novels completed in the last twenty-two years. NaNoWriMo hosts an entire community of writers, many of whom join because they’ve never written a novel before. Their connections on the site keep them accountable to their daily word count, give advice, and cheer them on.
Not every novelist signs up for the organization or formally participates in the challenge, though; many aren’t even fans of the idea, claiming that writing to produce a word count discounts craft, that any novel pumped out so quickly will be bad. For sure they will. They are first drafts. That’s what revision is for.
One agent acknowledged on Twitter that, though she’s excited to see what comes from #NaNoWriMo, she wants writers to please edit before querying. I even had a dream about this problem, in which agents shut down their inboxes during the month of December so they wouldn’t receive crappy NaNoWriMo queries.
It was an anxiety dream, not because I plan to pump out a novel within the next month (I have never participated in the challenge, though I do often happen to be drafting a book each fall), but because, though I’m entering the month with 60,000 words of a draft already written, I have a looming deadline (November 28th) with my workshop, who expect a finished and relatively revised draft by then. That’s obviously enough pressure for me to dream I’m participating in NaNoWriMo.
That dream got me thinking about why so many commit to NaNoWriMo. What is the draw of meeting a daily word count? Does it inspire participants, or create anxiety over their writing? Do they write for the aim of publishing their manuscripts or just to participate in a group challenge?
Some famous novelist, like Stephen King and Anne Lamott, have recommended that writers write every day and try to meet a minimum word count, creating a habit of it, like going to the office. Except, workers who go to the office allow weekends and sick days. They have external motivators, such as a salary. I wonder if writing every day for a month without break creates any kind of burnout. And what happens if for whatever reason someone can’t write one day—do we subconsciously feel like failures? Or do we just tack on the extra words to the next day? Is that motivating or destructive? To me, the hard rule of writing every day feels like fad dieting: if we don’t allow flexibility, we are sure to gain the weight right back. For others, the deadline seems to better them.
But November is not just about establishing writing habits. The goal is to produce a novel-length work, which means writers must be considering the end goal: publishing. According to Forbes, somewhere between 600,000-1,000,000 books are published each year, half of which are self-published and probably not widely read. If traditional publishers are putting out about 300,000 books a year, and they only accept about 1% of submitted manuscripts, that means million manuscripts are written and submitted to traditional agents and publishers a year. I wonder how many of those are written in November. I wonder how many people—come December 1—never pick up those drafts again, trashing them for something else, and how many work on their drafts the other eleven months of the year (or years), beating the seemingly unsurmountable odds of traditional publishing.
So, why undergo all that work if the stories won’t likely be read? I think some writers treat NaNoWriMo like some runners treat marathons. It is a challenge to overcome. A “Why not?” Isn’t the joke that we all have the Great American Novel in us, that if we could only sit our butts down in the chair and produce about 80,000 words, we will become rich and famous writers? Well, if you write about 2-3,000 words a day for a month, you likely won’t become rich and famous, and your words might not even be considered a novel, but you will, at least, have produced a novel-length work.
I do believe we all have a novel (or ten) in us, and anyone can write one. But taking on the challenge of NaNoWriMo doesn’t mean anything will come from the experience other than checking something off bucket list. Work needs to go into revisions. Countless hours need to go into submitting to hundreds of agents, who—if they really, really, really like the novel—will submit to many publishers. If self-publishing, a writer must invest personal finances and time to promoting and gaining readership.
Regardless of whether NaNoWriMo produces good or bad works, good habits or self-doubt, whether writers do anything with the manuscripts or forget they exist, the challenge does get more people writing their stories, thinking about how characters grow through challenge, striving to understand how people affect one another.
That can only be a good thing, right?