(Hi, folks! For the time being, some, most, or all of the fol­low­ing links will still revert back to the orig­i­nal Writ­ing About Writ­ing web­page over on Blog­ger. This is not a mis­take. It just takes a long time to move thou­sands of arti­cles. Thank you for your patience as we nav­i­gate this tran­si­tion.)

Question: Why Do I Hate NaNoWriMo?

Short answer:
I don’t. My opin­ion is much more com­pli­cat­ed. Read more than that one arti­cle!

Long answer:
I know the Inter­net is where nuance goes to die, and peo­ple become super stab­by fuc­knoo­dles when it’s their sacred cows receiv­ing any­thing but adu­la­tion, and that NaNo is basi­cal­ly a cult that you can besmirch at your own per­il, but some­times the feed­back on this issue real­ly makes me won­der if peo­ple have done their due dili­gence before return­ing fire. I mean, peo­ple will read the one viral arti­cle I’ve writ­ten about NaNo, which might as well be titled “my prob­lems with NaNo,” and lit­er­al­ly write me to ask: “what’s your prob­lem with NaNo?“

And I’m all like: “Bro, do you even bul­let-point?“

I get that some­times sin­gle arti­cles go viral with­out nec­es­sar­i­ly the con­text of a broad­er body of a writer’s works, and that peo­ple will respond to that arti­cle with­out know­ing that I write from the per­sona of an evil ver­sion of myself that lives in the base­ment and loves NaNo (by the way if that metaphor is too much for you, I’m not sure what to say). But I often give advice about how to sur­vive the month.

Like 15 bits of advice if you’re doing the event.
Or like what to do in the week or two right before.
Or how to han­dle it when you’re in week two and the bloom is off the rose.

Or some advice to fin­ish that last week of slog and cross the fin­ish line.
Or some writ­ing exer­cis­es to help you decide what your pace is going to be.
And some last words of wis­dom right before you start.

And even though I have answered this ques­tion, or ques­tions quite a bit like it, a cou­ple of dif­fer­ent times before it lit­er­al­ly became “fre­quent­ly asked.“

And even though I have a “NaNoW­riMo” tag that goes to all these arti­cles, and a search bar where one could punch in “NaNoW­riMo,” and the “rec­om­mend­ed arti­cles” at the bot­tom are oth­er NaNo arti­cles I’ve writ­ten.

I mean it’s not like I sit around and expect peo­ple to do research on me before send­ing a nasty-gram, but it’s sort of weird that a self-iden­ti­fied writer (who, by def­i­n­i­tion must be a read­er) does­n’t even actu­al­ly read the one arti­cle in toto either.

If you real­ly want to make me cry by stick­ing it to me so very, very good. Try the fol­low­ing before you reach for that reply but­ton –– get such basic facts cor­rect as:

• I’ve done NaNoW­riMo sev­er­al times before
• What I think is good about NaNo (Lit­er­al­ly “the good”)
• That I have con­flict­ed feel­ings. CON. FLIC. TED.
• That peo­ple who know what they’re doing and how NaNo fits into the big­ger process of writ­ing should do what­ev­er works
• What my “prob­lem” is 
• Exact­ly why I don’t think that it is some­thing that a new writer or a writer inex­pe­ri­enced at a dai­ly word count should dive into

So I can appre­ci­ate that your sphinc­ter tight­ened in rage as soon as you read that the title of the arti­cle was­n’t “NaNoW­riMo is the best thing since three­somes WITH sliced bread! (And that’s why it’s called a sand­wich. NAAAARF!)” If you read more than the title of the sec­tions (and maybe some pic­ture cap­tions). And if you are capa­ble of han­dling the fact of pro­fes­sion­al writ­ers (not just me) glanc­ing side­ways at your pre­cious, let me try to answer this 

One. 

More. 

Time.

I like NaNo. I often do NaNo. I have “won” NaNo mul­ti­ple times. I enjoy the pres­sure. I like the dis­ci­pline. I have even done it since I start­ed blog­ging. But being aware of nuance is impor­tant with an event that 4/5+ fail to fin­ish year after year.

To be clear, if you want to do NaNo, do NaNo. Knock your fuck­ing self out. If it works for you, do what­ev­er works. That’s the only rule that real­ly mat­ters in art any­way. If you under­stand how light­ning drafts fit into the writ­ing process, rock rock on. If you real­ly “grok” that your NaNo man­u­script isn’t going to get pub­lished, kick ass and chew gum. Don’t let any­one tell you what to do. Least of all me.

How­ev­er, I wrote that arti­cle because my opin­ion was specif­i­cal­ly solicit­ed, and I know too many damned good writ­ers who NaNo has bro­ken. I’m not just try­ing to pinch out a fat deuce in peo­ple’s sand­cas­tle. I actu­al­ly don’t think NaNo is neu­tral in a zero sum game and every­one should just do it or not depend­ing on their whim. ESPECIALLY inex­pe­ri­enced writ­ers who are putting all their eggs in its bas­ket.

Look, trust me. I’m the biggest fan of peo­ple just writ­ing for writ­ing’s sake that I know. I tell peo­ple every day not to wor­ry about get­ting pub­lished, get­ting paid, get­ting famous, get­ting three­somes, get­ting any­thing, but to just WRITE because writ­ing is ful­fill­ing. And I’m also the guy telling you to write every day, even when it isn’t easy. The cir­cum­stances in which I sug­gest any­one not write are few and far between and high­ly con­text depen­dent. 

If I did not know HUNDREDS of writ­ers who tried and failed NaNo’s break­neck über­pace and then became despon­dent, burnt out pud­dles of self-doubt because they were con­vinced a “real writer” would have been able to pump out 1667 words a day and clear­ly they weren’t such a real writer*, I might have more of a lais­sez-faire atti­tude. If I did­n’t know pub­lish­ers and agents who got thou­sands of man­u­scripts in Decem­ber, I might think that the writ­ers weren’t ignor­ing the revi­sion process of writ­ing. If I did­n’t see lit­er­al­ly thou­sands and thou­sands of “writ­ers” who do absolute­ly no writ­ing out­side of Novem­ber, frus­trat­ed beyond rea­son that they can’t seem to launch a tidy career as a nov­el­ist. If I did­n’t see the harm the event did, you bet your ass I would sug­gest that every­one at least give it a try because why not?

But there is a why not. And if you direct­ly solic­it my opin­ion about it, I’m going to tell you what it is. 

Some parts of NaNo are good, and some writ­ers can han­dle it quite well. But most new writ­ers need to learn to tack­le a more rea­son­able pace, and need to learn to do it more than one month a year. 

*Days in the last year I have pumped out 1667 words: zero. (And I make real mon­ey at this and am read by thou­sands, so this is not the mark of a “real” writer.) 

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