Why I quit NanoWriMo.

So, here it is. 13 days into November and the current round of National Novel Writing Month, or NanoWriMo for short.

It’s about this time that I realised this is not actually good. I first heard about NanoWriMo in October of 2009. At that point, I thought it was a great idea. A good kickstart into getting a “zero draft” of a novel–and don’t kid yourself it IS only a zero draft.

What is a Zero draft? Well, it’s the draft that allows you to get the story down on paper (or print using a computer). It’s the one from where all novels proceed. It gives you the ability to make mistakes, to learn, to grow, to discover the holes in the story.

But that’s not the reason I quit. I understand the early drafts. I love the early drafts, and getting to tweak them around, or sometimes beat them into submission. The reason I quit this year is because I don’t believe in NanoWriMo as a thing any more. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve done every November since 2009. I’ve only failed to get the word count one year (2011 from memory) when work piled on that year and I was staying late and starting early so I couldn’t sit down to write. But that’s fine. I accept that, I welcomed the challenge and unfortunately that year didn’t quite make it.

It occured to me this year that this challenge was not good to do. Having started this year by doing “reverse nano” I was getting my word count. Making pages. I was ahead (I still am). If you don’t know, reverse nano is where you do more words than standard per day so halfway through you end up writing significantly less than people doing it normally.

So, you’re thinking. Why did you quit? Well, it’s simple. I’ve lost faith in this challenge. I guess I lost faith in this challenge about a year ago but never really thought about it until now. All I was doing while trying to keep ahead, and up to date with wordcount, was to add words, phrases, anything just to get the goal. 90% of which is probably going to be trashed later. Even dialogue parts, just adding stuff because I needed the word count.

“But you’re doing a zero draft to edit later. Why stop?” you ask? Because I can do that in my own time, in my own way. I can get the scenes to come out closer to what I want them initially, rather than going off on even a smaller tangent.

I’m still keeping my writing times. I’m still working on this novel (and others after, lots of ideas). But NanoWriMo is not the right place for this.

Thinking about it, it’s only suited to a VERY small niche of the writing market. People that are over writers don’t need to do it because 50K in a month isn’t a challenge to them. You can see who these people are. They are the ones who post a completed total of 50K or over on the first day (or first couple of days). Where’s the challenge for them? Why are they doing it if they can complete it that fast? It’s actually rather pointless.

The second problem is under writers (I tend to count myself in this for the most part). Under writers tend to write slowly. They craft the words, probably too carefully, and therefore end up struggling when they try to reach each days targets. While this gives a challenge, it creates too much stress which then causes creative people to have harder times to find words.

The third and last one, is the group that fit NanoWriMo. The smaller subsect. People who can reach the wordcount on the day. Who can craft the words they want, and ignore their inner editor (harder to do than it sounds for some).

It also leads to books being published that probably aren’t ready to be, especially with the emerging self-publishing market going strong right now. Now, I’m not saying don’t write, or don’t publish, but schedule it around your time. Don’t schedule it around something that happens one month in a year.

I’m keeping my writing time. The story I’m looking at I love, and I’m passionate about. But I’m doing it on my own timeline, no-one elses. I’m not rushing the story I want to tell just to complete this challenge. So, goodbye NanoWrimo. I’ve learnt a lot, and met some good friends, but this is where it ends for me.

So, that is why I quit NanoWriMo. (and why you probably should as well).