Yep, another NaNoWriMo is upon us. Hundreds of thousands of eager writers, in every time zone, are prepping for the annual 50,000-word marathon.
Nano has been around since 1999 (btw, also the birth year of my youngest kid who has similarly evolved). We have a dude named Chris Baty to thank for its inception and humble beginnings targeting aspiring novelists from the Bay Area. That first year, NaNoWriMo took place in July—the foggy, cool San Francisco summer environment being an outlier in the grand scheme of things. But the 21 “Wrimos” in that inaugural year proliferated and spread like—well, pick your natural or viral disaster—and subsequent NaNoWriMos found more eager participants during the more universally shitty weather of November.
Twenty-two years later, here we are, now beckoned to create Pinterest pages and Spotify playlists and mock-up covers for our NaNo projects. We are encouraged to join regional groups of Wrimos, and to forge accountability relationships with “buddies.” We are enticed to earn badges and chat on “Discord” groups as we tally our wordcounts. Oh, and don’t forget to donate money to … who, exactly?
Do I sound cynical? I hope I don’t sound cynical.
The truth is, I love the idea of setting aside a month to prioritize writing. It’s like January is to dieters or drunks, right? A course correction. Only, WriMos are encouraged to do more of something they love, rather than less.
But here’s the thing: writers are more often than not introverts. We splash around in the puddles of our dreams, talk to ourselves on walks (thank goodness masks are a thing now, so we can avoid the crazy stares), sit for hours in the confines of our psychic musings. Social media has largely fucked that up, of course. We’ve all, to a certain extent, become mini-memoirists, spewing our raw data like fairy dust onto any number of digital canvases. Weird shit happens with this sort of preoccupation, and, dare I say, it ain’t necessarily good. Sometimes, the impetus to post something happens at the expense of following a deeper, more considered (and laborious) amalgam of imagination, concentration, and faith. Faith that allows us to follow our characters into frightening scenarios and chaotic actions in order to reach meaningful narrative consequences.
The so-called line of flight that Lish compels his students to arrive at is dependent upon uninterrupted hyper-concentration. Instead of abandoning the work at hand in favor of a tweet filled with the irony of announcing #amwriting, why not take the energy of that would-be post and harness it to your work?
Our world is so chock full of FOMO-esque interweb distraction, I find it disheartening to see NaNoWriMo littered with more of the same. I mean, 50,000 words in a month is enough time at the keyboard, don’t you think? Do you really need to take the time to introduce yourself to 175 random folks in your “region”? Do you really need to peruse Spotify for songs that your characters would have on their playlists? Search for images on Unsplash that concretize your visual understanding of your made up world?
Yeah, well, I’ve done all of those things. Check it out. But come November, it’s head forward, fingernails clipped, Ibuprofen at the ready. Those 1,700 words a day ain’t gonna write themselves.
Last year (I had actually forgotten that I’d participated), I got to about 30,000 words. Then abandoned the manuscript completely. It’s not even in my dropbox anymore. I failed. Quit. Gave up. Moved on. Partly, I think, because I got distracted with all the bells and whistles and the feeling that I wasn’t really engaged with my story. And, you know, the weird pre-vaccine pandemic vibe freaking me the fuck out—oh, and having everyone online at my house, working remotely. God, what a nightmare.
This year, I’m in a better head space. I’ve carved out the writing time. I think I can do this. But I’m not on board with word count as the defining metric. It simply doesn’t work for me. 50,000 (mostly unusable) vomited words equals sending my chiropractor’s kid through U of O.