NaNoWriMo

NaNoWriMo: The Importance of Conflict

Posted by Lora Maroney on November 18, 2011
Posted in: NaNoWriMo, Writing. Tagged: , , , . 3 comments

The NaNoWriMo forums are rife with suggestions on what to do when the word count runs dry and a scene grinds to a halt. I readily admit that I am somewhat of a snob — even on a day when I delete more than I add, I would refuse to take out all contractions in my story and count that as progress, or give a character three names, or throw in a dream sequence or sex scene just to make the daily minimum.

These are all valid tricks, I suppose (other than the contractions thing, which really just irritates me) but I have one that works infinitely better — it makes for longer scenes, meaning more words, and unlike a dream sequence, actually moves the plot forward so that when the scene ends, I’m not stuck back where I was when I started. If you’ve read the title you know what this is, but I’ll drum up unnecessary suspense anyway. Are you ready?

It’s conflict.

Conflict is the single most effective way of increasing word count and moving along a story that I have ever found. The best part is, conflict does not necessarily negate those other tips and tricks — you could have a dream sequence or sex scene fraught with conflict that will actually add to the value of your story, rather than just the number at the bottom of the screen. (It’s at the bottom of the screen because you’re all using Scrivener. You’re all using Scrivener, right?)

If a scene is going nowhere, or the story is lacking lustre, or I can’t figure out what I’m doing with a character, it’s probably because I’ve forgotten about conflict. I tend to write good characters who try to do the right thing — albeit often failing, but their intentions are honourable — and the problem with this is, after a while, without external problems, they sort of dry up. I start to get frustrated, and my writing suffers for it. At this point, either I remember (or some kind soul reminds me) that I haven’t had any conflict happen for some time.

Make your characters get in a fight with a loved one (or a rival! or colleague! or stranger! anything will do). Make them doubt themselves. Give them the right decision for the wrong reason, or the reverse. It doesn’t have to be huge and plot-altering, but you’ll be surprised at what happens when you allow a character to get angry, or give them a reason to lose their temper, and I’m not just talking about word count.

Because exactly how in real life, fights that start about not replacing the toilet paper when the old roll runs out end up in screaming matches about how the other person’s mother is trying to sabotage the relationship, in fiction, conflict can bring to light things about your story and characters that you had no idea where hiding anywhere. Your character in a happy relationship might actually be harbouring thoughts about that steak knife and which parts of their partner might be most satisfying to stick it in. Another character who seems confident and happy might be hiding a secret that threatens to tear them to pieces.

You’ll never know if you let them ride through it. Chances are, if a scene or character is stalled, this is why — and the answer is not to put in 500 words of them dreaming about doughnuts. Conflict. Try it today!

Photo of the Day: NaNoWriMo Tools

Posted by Lora Maroney on November 13, 2011
Posted in: NaNoWriMo, Photo of the Day. Tagged: , . 1 comment

It’s NaNoWriMo, so my photo-taking has been pretty sparse — but even worse, it’s been unseasonably warm this fall here in Japan, so the leaves haven’t turned yet! :( So whereas you’d usually be getting lovely autumn leaves, have my typical hunker-down-and-write supplies instead.

Clockwise from left: writing notebook (for ideas, structure, brainstorming), chai, mobile internet, netbook, 160GB iPod.

And for those of you coffee snobs, I write at Starbucks because a) it’s close and b) unlike EVERYWHERE ELSE in Japan, there’s no smoking.

Bonus: Kate Beaton shirt and my GIANT HEADPHONES which I use because in order for someone to talk to me, I have to physically remove them from my head in a very put-upon manner (unlike just popping out an earbud).

NaNoWriMo: Act I Wrap-Up

Posted by Lora Maroney on November 7, 2011
Posted in: NaNoWriMo, Writing. Tagged: , . Leave a Comment

A confession before I begin: the last thing I wrote was a series of letters written by characters from 1806, so I have to fight the urge to capitalise all the nouns in this post. Hopefully the urge passes, but right now it’s an automatic process I have to keep overriding. Ah, outdated punctuation rules!

Most people step back from NaNoWriMo at the end of every week, but since my story is divided into 5 acts that I’ve split across the month accordingly, I’m doing this every 6 days.

Act I Stats:

  • Words written (total): 22,326
    • Day 1: 4,560
    • Day 2: 4,520
    • Day 3: 2,706
    • Day 4: 3,703
    • Day 5: 3,606
    • Day 6: 3,231
  • Morale (overall): Medium-high
    • Day 1: 6 (started slowly, but went well)
    • Day 2: 8
    • Day 3: 6 (another slow start)
    • Day 4: 8
    • Day 5: 5 (average – morning was 2, evening was 8)
    • Day 6: 7 (average – morning involved a temper tantrum)
  • Writing locations:
    • bed
    • work (desk)
    • work (library)
    • train
    • Starbucks
  • Characters killed (on screen): 2
  • Characters incapacitated (on screen): 5
  • Characters brought into the future: 4
  • Characters emotionally traumatised: 2
  • Characters manfully soldiering on through their man-pain: 3
  • NaNoWriMo-related Internet searches:
    • “history of the ice cube”
    • “anti-Napoleon caricatures”
    • “British Napoleonic-era propaganda slogans”
    • “British cavalry sabre”
    • “British cavalry pistols”
    • “Lord Byron’s letters”
    • “capitalisation & punctuation in 1800 English letter-writing”

Traditionally Week 1 is the crazed rush time, with all the setup and juicy hints and craziness. Week 2 is where it starts getting hard; you have to start expanding and explaining things, rather than just tossing in new stuff, and both your characters and your plot need to grow and advance. This will probably happen, as Act 1 for me involved the setup, with all the culture shock and character introductions and new species and technology and time travel. Act 2 is the “settling in and developing” phase, so we’ll see how that goes.

One thing I will add for people who are struggling: don’t be afraid to edit — just be careful how you do it. NaNoWriMo has a “no editing” clause that I ignore when I see fit, because sometimes, it’s what I need to do to move on. On the 5th, I had started in completely the wrong direction, and only after talking it out and doing a heavy delete-edit-rearrange was I able to continue — for another 3,000 words that day, fixing my stalled plot.

Editing is only bad if you do it instead of writing, if you let it flip you over from ‘creative mode’ to ‘super picky analytical mode’ and scare you into doubting yourself. Sometimes — especially in my case — I need to edit, or the story will simply not continue. I remember once, during my high school Star Wars fanfic days, I had been stuck at the same spot in my story for about two weeks, whereupon I finally tore out about 20 pages from my draft binder. Within a day, I had made them back.

Don’t let anyone tell you not to edit if you know the story needs it — just don’t let it become a crutch, and don’t do nitpicky things. Only edit if you have the gut feeling that this is all wrong, that you’ve taken a wrong turn somewhere. Also, don’t delete if you can help it — make a “graveyard file” and put the words there, in case you can use them later. I make a folder in Scrivener, outside the manuscript hierarchy; others change the text colour to white and put it at the end. Whatever works for you.

How are your novels going?

To the NaNoReMo Crowd, from a NaNoWriMo Veteran

Posted by Lora Maroney on November 4, 2011
Posted in: Editing, NaNoWriMo, Rants, Writing. Tagged: , , , , , . Leave a Comment

For those who don’t know,  the NaNoReMo to which I’m referring is the smug elitist’s answer to NaNoWriMo (the write a novel in a month challenge). Some people use NaNoReMo to mean “National Novel Reading Month” — those people are fine. However, others use it to mean “National Novel Rejection Month” — aka, the month where agents and publishers the world over reject all the terrible NaNoWriMo novels submitted to them in December.

Look, I get that NaNoWriMo is scary. I get that people don’t want writing to be an accessible thing, that, as Syndrome says, if everyone is super, then no one will be. I get that writers are proud of how difficult writing is. I get that the idea of writing feverishly for one month and then not continuing for the rest of the year offends some true artistes. I get the idea that someone else coming into your playhouse for a month and thinking they own it can be upsetting. I get it. I also get that it’s fun to take people down a peg, to find someone genuinely excited about something and to walk up and tell them it’s pointless.

Every year, this snarky hashtag (or some variant) rears its ugly head, and I am asking — beseeching — people to stop it. NaNoWriMo writers do not submit their novels to publishers as soon as December hits. The official NaNoWriMo site in fact asks people not to. March is NaNoEdMo (National Novel Editing Month) for a reason. Novelists are encouraged to take a break for December, then come back and look at their manuscript with fresh eyes. The forums have an editing section, with resources, suggestions, and a place for people to find beta readers for their work. Every year, thousands of people use these features.

I have participated in NaNoWriMo since 2004, and am an avid forum-goer as well. Not once in the thousands of discussions of post-November plans have I seen someone submit their novel to a publisher right away. People aren’t stupid. People who have finished novels through a program designed to get them over their fear and hesitation, and to turn off the inner editor, they know they’re not holding publishable material. But they at least have something. Something they did not have on October 31st.

Some people put their novels away and never look at them again. THAT’S OKAY.

Some people send them out to crit groups and edit feverishly, then give up and never submit it anywhere. THAT’S OKAY.

Some people edit, work, submit, and end up getting their NaNoWriMo novel published and optioned for a film with Robert Pattinson, raising the hopes of everyone participating in NaNoWriMo who hopes to get published someday. THAT’S OKAY.

Some people finish the first draft, send it out immediately, and get a form rejection. THAT’S OKAY.

Some people complain that NaNoWriMo novelists plunk their books into Createspace on Amazon and think they’ve been “published’. THAT’S OKAY TOO.

The slush pile does not see a quantifiable increase during December because of NaNoWriMo — and even if it did, what does it matter? People write terrible novels and submit them every day. People who crafted for years, who painstakingly edit every single word, write terrible novels every day. Slush pile agents are who they are for a reason; they’re tough. They can survive.

The proper way to handle this fear of an influx of terrible first drafts is to remind people about the importance of editing. This is advice useful to everyone, no matter how insignificant or how important. A first-time NaNoWriMo novelist needs this just as much as J.K. Rowling did when she wrote that epilogue.

Acting like elitist crab apples and coming over to someone’s house just to urinate in their swimming pool helps no one. It discourages honest, creativity-loving people from continuing something that is designed to help them bypass their formidable inner critic. How does making snarky remarks about NaNoReMo solve anything? Does it make you a literary warrior, as some people seem to think? No. It’s the worst form of intellectual bullying, and it needs to stop.

The world of writing should be a place of community, not an excuse to tear other people down. So before chuckling and hitting  ‘retweet’ on those NaNoReMo missives, try taking a walk or playing with a puppy instead. Most NaNoWriMo novelists will never be published — who cares? Let them do what we all have in common: write, and love to do it.

NaNoWriMo: It Begins!

Posted by Lora Maroney on October 31, 2011
Posted in: NaNoWriMo. Tagged: , . Leave a Comment

It’s 11:23 on October 31st over here in Japan-land (fun fact: that’s one hour off from 1023, aka the identification number of stormtrooper Davin Felth, aka the guy who said “Look, sir! Droids!” — there, that’s a taste of what it’s like to live in my head).

Ever since 2004, Halloween for me ends around sundown. During the day I’ll wear a costume to work and have fun, but once I’m home, it’s time to get ready for NaNoWriMo. It’s great, because I actually hate Halloween parties anyway, and now I have a vaguely-impressive-sounding excuse (“sorry, I’m writing a novel”) rather than just being an antisocial shut-in. (Fun fact 2: this is also the excuse I use for not doing anything with my hair, other than washing it and letting it dry. “Would people recognise Neil Gaiman if he combed HIS hair? … well, probably, but NEVER MIND.”)

I’m going to try to post once a week during all this, giving an overview of the week’s progress, complete with word count, mood, and best Google searches, but we all know how it goes. Anything can happen during NaNoWriMo, but blogging may not be one of them.

For those joining me on this madcap literary adventure, I salute you! For those sitting out this round, watching enviously from the sidelines, or even changing the channel in a huff, I ask your patience on behalf of everyone taking on the challenge. I only wish that spray-on shampoo that made the rounds on infomercials in the 80s was a) still extant and b) actually worked.

My NaNoWriMo profile here, for you who haven’t seen it. Just for fun, here’s my novel summary again:

Synopsis

Between two worlds life hovers like a star,
‘Twixt night and morn, upon the horizon’s verge.
How little do we know that which we are!
How less what we may be!

– from Byron, Don Juan (1824) canto 15, st. 99

When a group of atavistic historical reenactors misuse Temporal Historical Society technology to travel back in time to 1806 and give themselves a new life in the past, they send four confused contemporaries into the future in their place:

LADY JOSEPHINE BRANSCOMBE, widow of Geoffrey Branscombe (killed in action against Napoleon in Prussia), who would rather have her husband here than honour in his stead. Tired of the war and its blind patriotism in 1806, she has no desire to be blindly pulled into another.

CAPTAIN HENRY FITZWILLIAM of His Majesty’s Royal Navy, currently on furlough after a traumatic incident in battle and avoiding the conversation with himself about what to do if he can’t take command again. Already facing an existential crisis,he finds himself at a loss as to how he can make himself useful in a society where he has no purpose.

LIEUTENANT ARTHUR BENJAMIN HARDING, upwardly-mobile cavalry officer and ladies’ man, recently distinguished in battle after a mad charge led his outfit to victory. Well used to the company and adulation of European women, he discovers that in the future he’s as aesthetically appealing to them as Neanderthals to him.

And …

LORD GEORGE BYRON, age 19, just published his first anonymous set of poems, and only beginning to set foot down the road to fame. Recently cowed into destroying almost all copies of his original poetry collection by a disapproving critic, he faces the knowledge of a lifetime of art and infamy he’ll never get to experience.

Thrust into the future with no way back, forced to assimilate new languages, cultures, technology, and biology, in a society embroiled in a war with echoes of the one they just escaped, the four must rediscover who they are, and on what side of the battle line they choose to stand.

Have fun this month, everybody! I’ll see you on the flip side.

To NaNoWriMo or Not To NaNoWriMo: A Post for the Fence-Sitters

Posted by Lora Maroney on October 18, 2011
Posted in: NaNoWriMo, Writing. Tagged: , , , , , , , . 4 comments

It's NaNoWriMo time!

November is the month where tens of thousands of writers — professional, amateur, devoted, casual, long-term, first-time — gather to pound out 50,000 or more glorious words into a single project within 30 days.

Of course, this is also the time of year when many writers start to pooh-pooh NaNoWriMo, saying that it produces nothing but garbage, that it makes normal people think they can be writers, that it's useless, that it's a waste of time, that it kills creativity, that NaNoWriMo is fine but REAL writers know about NaNoWriLife. To them I say: that's nice for you, but don't go urinating in someone else's swimming pool.

Today's post is not for the detractors, trying to sway them, and it's not for the defenders, championing for them: it's for the fence-sitters. If you scroll through tweets with the #NaNoWriMo hashtag on Twitter, you'll notice countless people saying "I'm thinking about doing NaNoWriMo, but …" and "Should I do NaNoWriMo?"

Those people, this is for you.

There are a few main "I want to do NaNoWriMo, but …" excuses. I'll do my best to help alleviate your fears.

1. I don't have any good ideas.

That's okay! Many, many people jump into November with only a concept, a character, or the faintest image. If that terrifies you — and believe me, I understand — then here are a few things you can try, to see if something sparks:

  • think of something you've always wanted to read, but don't see enough of. For me last year, that was girls, being friends and having adventures and NOT fighting over a boy. I decided to write that, and it was fantastic.
  • think of the most self-indulgent, happy-place things for you when you read — the sort of thing where, if a story includes it, you'll forgive a whole bunch else. A friend of mine loves winged horses. Another friend loves unnecessary steampunk. I love repressed Napoleonic-era British characters. Make a list of things that make you happy, then write a story with as many of those as you can.
  • what-ifs. What if cats were telepathic? What if South Africa were the world's dominant global power? What if movies became illegal? Play around with "what-ifs" and ask questions. Built a world from there. 
  • mergers. Take your favourite plot and transport it somewhere. Watership Down, my favourite book ever, is basically Odysseus … WITH RABBITS. David Drake's RCN series is Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey-Maturin series … IN SPACE. Think of a story you love to watch and put it somewhere else, or switch the genre. Married with Children … WITH ROBOTS. The Shining … as ROMANTIC COMEDY.
  • "I could do better". Think of a story — book, movie, TV show — that you had high hopes for, but which fizzled out at the end. If you found yourself thinking, "Ahh, if only they'd done xyz …" then you have yourself an idea. Start with that and build yourself a whole new world.

Whatever you do, just make sure you're enthusiastic about the idea. A good idea is not necessarily one that you think you could see on a shelf of a prestigious person's home library; but it is one that you can't stop talking about, even when your loved ones' eyes start to glaze over. Even if you think it's silly or has no long-term merit, that's much better than the serious, literary, guaranteed-to-make-Oprah's-list bestseller that you're not really thrilled about. Guess which one you'll want to keep ploughing through in week two once the glow fades? Yeah.

2. I won't write anything good.

This DOES NOT MATTER. Many detractors focus on this point — better to write nothing at all, than to write crap, isn't it? Well, sorry, but they are DEAD WRONG. Writing anything, no matter what it is, is better than writing nothing. Bad writing can be fixed. No writing can't. The worst novel I'll ever write, as the saying goes, is better than the best novel you never did.

NaNoWriMo is not about writing garbage. The thousands of writers who churn out stories this month are not just vomiting onto their keyboards; they're plotting, and characterising, and everything else necessary to writing. The difference is that they're giving themselves the freedom to go crazy, to bypass boundaries and self-imposed limits, and just to create. For many, this means that instead of saying "One day …" they made the choice to write RIGHT NOW, when the community is strong, the pressure high, and the joy infectious.

Being afraid you'll write something bad is no reason not to NaNo. Part of the fun of NaNoWriMo is setting aside fear for those 30 days. If, for some reason, what you end up with on December 1st is 50,000 words of stinking dung, who cares? It's 50,000 words more than you would have written — and 50,000 words closer to honing your craft, to writing something good. Unless you're just banging away on the keyboard like the proverbial room of monkeys, you're actively working to improve — even if you don't think so. Even if you look at the end and it's terrible, you now have a good idea of various things that don't work in a story — and that puts you closer to finding the things that do.

3. I don't have time.

This is a tricky one, and I'm going to say something controversial: unless you're a parent with children too young to be in school, YES YOU DO.

The thing about NaNoWriMo is, it's sort of like the Misery Olympics. You know — "Man, today sucks. I lost my job." "Yeah? Well I lost my job AND my dog died." "Well, I lost my job, my dog died, AND I got evicted from my house." No matter how busy you are, there will be another person who's busier than you, and writing more. No one is going to sympathise with you saying you have no time; they're all going to tell you that they have it worse.

Competition aside, we always, always have more time than we think we do. We're just not willing to give it up. An exercise recommended by Chris Baty, NaNoWriMo's founder, is to track your habits for an entire week. Mark down every block of time when you're not doing something absolutely essential. You'll be shocked how much time you actually have, but you spend foofing around online, watching television, or just staring into space.

NaNoWriMo is about taking command of that time. Parents of young children know exactly how much can get done in a suddenly-free 15 minutes, or — joy of joys! — half an hour. Set your alarm an hour ahead. Turn off the Internet. Put your laptop on the treadmill. Don't check your work email when you're not at work. Unplug your TV. Bring your laptop into the bathroom. Bring a notebook on your commute. Buy a timer and set 15-minute breaks in the middle of your homework time, where you write until the timer dings, then go back to work. Whenever you find yourself flicking over to your favourite time-wasting website, STOP. Pull out your novel instead. If that sounds like a drag, then your excuse isn't that you have no time — it's that you have too many excuses.

If, however, you have small children, you're exempt from all of this. Honestly, I don't know how you people have time to dress yourselves in the morning, so hats off to you! In my world, parents who manage NaNoWriMo are like novelling superheroes.

4. I'm afraid of failure.

This is the only one where I'm willing to issue a real caveat. If you've never written substantially before and you're just afraid you won't make it to 50,000 — no time, no ideas, no talent — then give it a try. At worst, you'll wrote 0 words and be no worse off than before. At best, no matter how many words you write, you'll have more than you started.

However. If you're the sort of person who punishes yourself for perceived failure, then I do advise you a bit of caution. Even though NaNoWriMo is entirely voluntary, even though there are no penalties for NOT making 50,000 words, even though any pressure is entirely self-inflicted, there are people who, if they don't make it, will feel a disproportionate amount of failure directed at themselves.

There are people who can say "Oh, darn, I didn't finish — better luck next year!" or just "Ah well, guess it's not for me" and then move on. But there are also people who will spend the entire month in a stew of stress and depression, begrudging their friends every word count update and doubting every session of their own — not enough, could be more, what's the point. There are people who, if they don't make 50,000 words, will want to stop writing, or think that they can't, or shouldn't.

Some of my closest friends — fantastic writers year 'round — just aren't suited to the structure of NaNoWriMo. Having the deadline sucks the fun from their writing, and casts doubt on themselves and whether they're any good, just because they can't write fast during this particular month. If you're one of those people, be careful. This is the only time I'm going to tell someone that maybe NaNoWriMo isn't for them.

NaNoWriMo is, most fundamentally, insane. It's fun, but torturous; it's a rush, but exhausting; it's at once uplifting and soul-destroying. It's no accident that you'll see people posting in the official "This Is Going Better Than I Hoped" thread one day, then "NaNoWriMo Ate My Soul" the next. Some days, I'll pound out 8,000 words and finish feeling like I need a metaphorical cigarette; others I won't manage to add a single word to my draft. Some others I'll end up with fewer words than when I started. But I do it every year.

Some novels will get published; some novels will get shoved in a drawer or backup drive and never looked at again. And that's okay! NaNoWriMo is about the process of creating. It's about giving people who've always wanted to write a novel but…. the chance to throw off their excuses and just do it. It's about giving habitual writers a time to do what they always do, but to feel connected to others instead of isolated. It's about giving professionals an excuse to let loose, have fun, and not stress about marketability and agent deadlines.

Bottom line is, NaNoWriMo is not for everyone, but I do think everyone should give it a chance just to see if it is for them. As for me, this is my 8th, and I'll be ready and waiting, in my tiny apartment here in Japan, at 11:59pm on October 31st.

NaNoWriMo: Why I Gleefully Abandon Life for Thirty Days Each Year

Posted by Lora Maroney on December 5, 2010
Posted in: NaNoWriMo, Writing. Tagged: , , , , , . 5 comments

First, let me just say: if you aren't familiar with National Novel Writing Month, you reside in a very different corner of the Internet from me. From November 1 to 30th, tens of thousands of writers participate in a mad dash to write 50,000 words of a new work of fiction.  Around 18% of participants cross the finish line each year; the other still have more words written than they did October 31st.

This year was my sixth NaNoWriMo win, or my first, depending on how you categorize "winning" NaNoWriMo.  Since 2004, I have reached 50,000 words or more six times, but the end of November never coincided with the end of the plot — until now.  This year, I actually picked a story that worked perfectly — I spent a few hours on December 1st finishing the last chapter and the epilogue, but other than that, it all happened in the span of those thirty days.  I'm letting it sit for a month, then I'm going to dive in and start editing.  At that point I'll start coercing — er, requesting — that my reader and writer friends take a look for me as well.

Each year, but this year in particular, a crop of people appear who can't stand to watch others have fun, whether they're in the publishing industry and resent the influx of hastily-written novels that reach their desks in December, "serious" writers who dislike the dilution of the term "author" when it's applied to people who don't meet their stringent approval guidelines, or bystanders who don't write but somehow find themselves qualified to comment on how others do it.  The Internet becomes inundated with blog posts about why NaNoWriMo is a bad idea for readers and for writers; columns about the desecration of the written word; Twitter quips about the best thing a NaNoWriMo writer can do is burn their manuscript on December first.

It's endless. This year gave us a particularly poisonous piece (I refuse to link to it and give them the traffic), so bad that I'm half-convinced it was a publicity stunt to grab readership through outrage. The author denounced not only NaNoWriMo, but writers in general, calling us malignant narcissists who, not content with writing our own terrible prose, actively seek out and force innocent bystanders to read it.  The problem with NaNoWriMo, said the author, is that it's an event for writers, and writers don't deserve to be recognized.  It went on and on, harping on the same point of egocentrism and the need to celebrate readers, instead, assuming that people who write never read anything that didn't come from their own heads. 

The article has several problems, not the least of which is that without writers, we would have nothing for her darling readeres to, well, read.  Most irritating of all, to me, is this notion that writers only write for imaginary approbation, to the extent that we will force-feed our manuscripts anyone within a hundred-mile radius.  First of all, this is patently false, for while I admit I do enjoy having other people read my work and do hope to publish, I would, honestly, write if no one else read anything. Not one person has read more than a sentence of this year's NaNoWriMo novel, yet the entire experience has been rewarding and challenging for me.  But even that aside, the author still begged us to think of the readers, the poor, poor readers, forced to slog through the garbage that NaNoWriMo authors so selfishly shovel at them.

Here's the thing. No one can force you to read. If I pick up a book and I don't like it, I have the freedom to put it down. If I continue to read it despite my dislike, I can hardly blame the writer. No one holds a weapon to my skull or threatens to eat my cats or burn down my house if I put it down.  Even editors and agents have the prerogative to toss a manuscript in the trash if the first paragraph doesn't grab them.  The author of this article seemed to think that publishing is a magical unicorn fairyland place where someone can write something and instantly have it flooding the shelves of their local bookstore.  If that's true where she lives, I'll take a one-way ticket, please.

The other common argument I've seen involves NaNoWriMo's mantra, which is, "write crap". This, of course, offends serious readers and writers, none of whom, I'm sure, have ever had a hard day of writing, when every word they put down feels like garbage, and the inner voice that whispers soothing things like, "give up; everything good has already been written" is on overdrive. Unfortunately for me, I have those days often.  But for whatever reason, NaNoWriMo allows me to put that voice aside, like flicking a switch.  I don't — I like to believe, anyway — write crap.  But I allow myself to keep a paragraph that annoys me for a reason I can't articulate, or move past a section where the character voice isn't strong enough for my liking, because I can't fix it at the time — knowing I'll come back to it later.  This is the key.  It's a free pass from my neuroses for the first draft, and this allows me to get that first draft finished much faster than I do the rest of the year, when I insist each paragraph, each sentence, be up to my standards before I move on to the next.  Yes, the quality of work that I produce during those eleven months is higher right off the bat, but it takes me much longer to get there. 

I wouldn't do NaNoWriMo every month of the year; for one, I'd have to take every other year off to edit what I'd done the previous year.  But for a one-month vacation from my inner editor, it's fantastic.

For those who are interested in what I did this year, I stayed with my favourite speculative genre: science fiction.  My profile on the NaNoWriMo website is here.

Title: Hell in Half a Parsec

Genre: Science Fiction

Synopsis:

Best friends Taren and Cris want what all twelve-year-old girls want: to own a spaceship, even if they have to build it themselves. When they find a crashed ship in the woods, they think the dead body inside is the biggest obstacle to having a starship of their own at last. Unfortunately for the girls and their grand schemes, the ship — the grief-stricken Malec, devastated by the loss of his pilot — has other ideas, none of which include obeying the whims of two children who've never met a biological ship before.

For most people, a kidnapping attempt is a traumatic experience. For Rancem, an idealistic world leader suffering from a sudden outbreak of reality, it's the first pebble that paves the way out of his problems. His spontaneous promise to abolish taxes gave him the largest landslide election in history, and his planet no feasible means of building new hospitals, roads, schools, or much of anything. Rancem's brush with the underbelly of the law makes him realize that, sometimes, the ends can lie, cheat, and steal the pants off the means and still have a peaceful night's sleep.

Reluctantly thrown into the middle of conspiracy, accident, intent, bitterness, and betrayal, three humans and one starship must separate the roses from the dung in order to protect what's theirs. Because, of course, the universe isn't going to do it for them.