NaNoWriMo Turns Writing into a Sport.
National November Writing Month is a feel-good but useless exercise.
NaNoWriMo stands for National November Writing Month. It’s a challenge for aspiring writers to write a novel in a month. A standard minimum word count for a novel is 50,000 words (although no one will even look at your manuscript if it’s less than 70,000 words), but let’s stick with 50k for argument’s sake. That would require about 1600 words per day. A standard page of fiction is about 300 words. For me, 300 words a day is both an upper limit that I can possibly produce, and a minimum that I whip myself into producing. This is unedited, unstructured 300 words, unformed into sentences. In this context, 1600 words a day, formed into a more or less coherent story and not just thrown onto a page, is a writer’s version of riskless 20% return on investment. It cannot physically be done. I mean, technically it can be done, but it will not be a novel.
A more pertinent question here is what’s the point of writing a novel in a month? Is it a sport? Our obsession with efficiency and productivity had now seeped into making of an art. Writing has now become a flexing of muscles, a contest of quantification of effort and not the quality of the end result. It took you a year to write yours? Pfft. I wrote mine in a month!
Allow me to illustrate my point about the difficulty of good writing by giving an example. The first sample is the initial scrap notes, a paragraph that conjures an image from my head, just thrown, unstructured onto the page. It’s gibberish, a rough outline of an idea. It’s about 250 words, a day’s work. The second sample is the final version, with a continuity of thought, with a coherent structure, with a point made and delivered to a reader in a clear manner. It’s also a day’s work.
Initial gibberish version:
“In a world that insists on sliding into entropy, Las Vegas was a buttery layer of redundancy, a peacock’s tail in a sea of dull efficiency, a deliberately manufactured equity piece that softens the blow in a capital structure of life. High-caloric buffer. An astute portfolio manager would classify Vegas as a barbell trade, encompassing the most luxurious with the most pedestrian, and thus indestructible. Vegas is a barometer. Because it exists and thrives the world can’t possibly be collapsing. If a patron haven’t yet finished his drink and another is already on the way. While a coastal sophisticate can lament about its kitschy sentiments, the town developed those clownish ways for a purpose. Its own – and thus for society’s – endurance. Vegas vaccinates us against chaos by injecting acceptable and approved amounts of it in each of us. It keeps us from disintegration the way it holds back the elements – the desert, the heat. It’s a parody of civilization whose purpose is to help the civilization endure. If it’s food – it’s oysters and champagne; if it’s a show – it’s topless cabaret; if it’s a game – it bets a house on roulette. Champagne and oysters and cocaine have its uses. It tells a Midwesterner that he is safe, that everything will be all right, as long as a place like Las Vegas exists. Under the lights and the buffoonery there’s a soothing promise: before the entropy comes for a Midwesterner and his Cracker Barrel, it’d have to come for bond traders and Le Cirque first.”
And the final, edited version:
“At sunset, Las Vegas showed up on the horizon, its reflective surface popping up from hot, dusty nothingness. In a world that insisted on sliding into entropy, Las Vegas served as a barometer of civilization. The city’s redundancies and excesses had a purpose: they provided a buttery layer of protection, a high-caloric buffer that softened the adversarial forces in a capital structure of life. Vegas vaccinated the society from chaos by injecting a pre-approved amount of it into each of the visitors. It was a safety valve, a happy receptacle of the society’s detritus and sin that halted the disintegration of the humankind in the same way it held back the elements — the desert, the heat.
Scratch off all the tinsel and all the buffoonery, and underneath you’ll find a soothing promise of stability. A smart portfolio manager would classify Las Vegas as a barbell trade, encompassing the most luxurious with the most plebeian, and thus rendering the whole structure indestructible. Vegas tells an anxious tourist that he is safe, that everything will be all right. Before the entropy comes for a redneck’s Cracker Barrel, it’d first have to come for East Coast bond traders, and conference crowds, and Cipriani. And that could never happen. For as long as a place like Vegas exists, the world can’t possibly be collapsing.”
Easy and enjoyable to read? Yeah. Because it was difficult to write. These 250 words took two days of writing and editing. Imagine now producing 6 times that, in one day. It is only possible if one doesn’t write a novel, but types a bunch of unconnected, random thoughts.
So what’s the point of writing a novel in a month? Making novel writing into a competition stirs a range of insecurities in young, ambitious writers, that in turn generates endless opportunities for monetizing those insecurities. Around NaNoWriMo challenge there’s now a whole industry of services that ‘help’ you write: writing courses, writing groups, coaches, community. It is interesting how a writer is simultaneously encouraged to participate in group activities where he’ll have to devote his precious time to communicating with others, reading others’ stuff, commenting on their writing, receiving glib, useless feedback on his own writing, and also to write down 1600 words a day. NaNoWriMo challenge is an aggregation mechanism, not unlike a scammy online university, that gives aspiring writers a fake feeling of control and advancement. The writers are led to confuse feedback, encouragement, and hand holding with writing progress. They will be happy that someone read what they wrote, but the received critique will be worded so carefully, it will be so insipid, so afraid of offending that it will not offer anything of substance. It will be a shitty, superficial, kindergarten, ‘you go girl’ type of praise.
While navigating the universe of the writing-help industrial complex, one will also eventually come across an odd notion – usually in a form of an article or a podcast – of ‘tips on how to write a novel.’ Oh. What will those tips include? A generic advice fit for any novel? What’s the utility of that broad stroke for your particular work? A selection of plotline twists in the sagging middle part? A plotline twist is not the hard part, it’s not the part that needs advice. Everyone, every passing pedestrian can offer his or her ‘recommendation’ to your mid-point block: (“What if she has an abortion?” “What if his sister dies and he goes to her funeral and then he comes face to face with etc. etc.”, you get the idea). General ideas are not hard to generate. It’s the putting of those ideas on the page, fitting them into a smooth narrative, the granularity of it, the phraseology, the choice of words, the construction of the sentences that is the hard part, and no well-wishing coach’s tips can do that work for you.
NaNoWriMo is a prop that shields one from the hard truth – that writing is a torturous, solitary work. It omits the existence of everyday writer’s state – the state of having to write and not being able to write. It peddles cheers where what’s required is to be left alone in your room, with your thoughts and doubts and internal turmoil, solving puzzles, staring at the ceiling in despair, squeezing word after word from your head onto the page. That’s what writing is about. No amount of socializing and networking and courses can replace that.