The Joy of Nanowrimo
[This article first appeared in The Agenda #11, October 2005]
by Wesli AnneMarie Dymoke
This article is exactly 1667 words in length (not including the
headline, subhead, byline, or pull quotes). Let me set the stage here:
It's about twenty minutes to midnight, local time, on the 30th of
November, 2003, and I'm sweating bullets, trying to get my novel uploaded in
time for a verified wordcount. Although the official verification is just icing
on the cake of a triumph that I know
is real, even if no one else does, it's part of my job to set a good example
for others.
Thirty days earlier, on Halloween, I was equally nervous, because with
only hours to go, I still didn't know what I was going to write. As midnight
loomed, however, inspiration came down like seagull whitewash, and I was off
and running. Thirty days and fifty thousand words later, I was the proud
creator of a meandering, blathering, largely nonsensical pile of literary crap
that would have made that metaphorical seagull ashamed. It's hard to describe
how joyful that made me, as I wrapped up my second year of participation in
National Novel Writing Month, and my first year as Municipal Liaison for Rhode
Island.
Nanowrimo has a curious history. According to legend, in 1998, a
Bay-area freelance writer, Chris Baty (who has written for Lonely Planet, among
others) was burning to write a novel. Problem was, he just couldn't seem to
make the time to sit down and do it. Finally, he hit on a scheme so crazy, it
just might work: By invoking three time-proven productivity motives of modern
society—deadlines, quotas and peer pressure—he might overcome his literary
inertia. He got four friends to join him in a genuinely crazy challenge: Write
an original work of fiction, of at least fifty thousand words, in only thirty
days.
It worked. Or at least, it worked for him, though not for the others.
But the breakthrough, and the experience itself, was success enough, and
Nanowrimo was born. In 1999, the first “official” Nanowrimo, held in the Bay
area, there were 21 participants, six of whom made the goal in time. In 2000,
there were 140 participants and 29 winners. By 2001, word had gotten around,
and there was an enormous jump to five
thousand participants, with more than 700 winners at the end of the month. That
figure more than doubled in 2002, with around 13,500 writers and 2100 winners;
2003 saw about 25,000 writers and 3500 winners. And last year saw some 42,000
writers, and just under 6000 winners. My own projections suggest that this year
should see more than 65,000 participants, and there should be close to 10,000
winners.
The “national” challenge is now a global event, with so-called “wrimos”
hailing from nearly every developed country in the world. “Municipal
Liaisons”-local-area volunteer coordinators-now exist for every state and
province and most major metropolitan areas in North America, and many in Europe
also. The official site provides regional forums for nearly everywhere in the
world, and many more forums for other purposes.
There are forums for different genres, tips for getting through the
challenge, places to gloat about great success or moan about the agony of it
all, and by far the most popular, Character and Plot Realism, where wrimos can
post and answer niggling questions demanding special knowledge. If you want to
know what kind of shoes a mailman would wear, or what kind of disease could
temporarily blind your character, then take away her memory ten years later,
someone among those tens of thousands will have some kind of answer. Of course,
you can't always trust information from strangers; one recurring thread, the
Egregiously Erroneous Information thread, specifically invites people to ask
stupid and absurd questions and get even more stupid and absurd answers.
Probably the most common question about Nanowrimo is WHY. Founder Baty
answers it this way: “If you don't do it now, you probably never will. Novel
writing is mostly a 'one day' event. As in 'One day, I'd like to write a
novel.' Here's the truth: 99% of us, if left to our own devices, would never
make the time to write a novel.” Most people want to write something, but never
get around to it, and if they do, they don't stick it through to the end.
Nanowrimo provides both a clearly defined goal, and the impetus to reach it.
For those inclined to write but frustrated by the experience, and
especially by their disappointment in their own expectations, Nanowrimo can be
a watershed. When I finished it for the first time in 2002, I told my friends
that I learned more about writing in the last thirty days than I had in the
previous ten years. Three years and three crappy incomplete novels later, I
still hold to that truth. Nanowrimo isn't about getting it right, it's about
getting it written. You can always revise it later, but you can't edit what you
haven't written. More importantly, it helps writers to overcome the fear of
writing badly.
In our business-oriented culture, most writing courses are vocational in
purpose. Expository and technical methods are ideal for clear writing for
business, industry and government, but anathema to free-flowing creative
writing. If you have to know what you're going to say before you say it, you
will never be able to tap the best of your imagination. The pressure during
Nanowrimo to deliver raw content, of any calibre, helps writers overcome their
fear of delivering incomplete, half-baked, poorly-conceived material; and for
the lucky ones, somewhere after halfway through the ordeal, the dam breaks, and
when they finally learn to let go and trust their subconscious (if only out of
sheer exhaustion), they discover an entire world of imagination that they never
would have found if they were actively looking for it, as most prospective
writers try and fail to do.
Here's another way of looking at it: Whenever we take up a new
skill—baking, driving, fishing, piano—we don't expect to do well the first
time, or the second, or often for several more tries after that. We know that
that first cake will be inedible even to dogs, that we'll probably give our parents
a few new grey hairs as they stomp ferociously at imaginary brake pedals on the
passenger's side of the car, that we'll send a lot of worms to Davy Jones'
locker (along with lots of line, a reel or two, and maybe even an oar), and
that we'll want to strangle the person who wrote “Chopsticks” (or maybe Ben
Folds instead).
So why should we expect to deliver good writing before we've written a
pile of unreadable dreck first? It's perhaps for this reason that many of the
more enthusiastic and confident (and successful) wrimos have a background in
teenage fanfic, and quite a few in dubious slashfic as well. (If you have to
ask what that is, then you may not be ready to know.) Part of the reason is
that society expects good writing, or at least scorns bad writing, no matter
how earnest. Nanowrimo gives writers carte
blanche permission to produce bad writing.
For those who don't find the straightforward challenge stressful enough,
they can opt to become a Municipal Liaison, which is rather like herding cats.
Writers are typically shy and independent by nature, and getting them together,
to share with each other and do things together, can be quite a challenge in
itself. Add to that the ML's duty to always be an upbeat, enthusiastic
cheerleader for everyone under her wing, and you've got a recipe for madness.
This will be my third year, then, of total insanity. But this year, I've got
some help: Aquidneck has its own ML, and if this goes well, and there are
enough people, it might even split off as its own region, which should be
startling for those in the seven states with smaller populations. (Last year,
Montana was closest to Rhode Island for number of registered participants.)
The challenge is daunting if one thinks of it as fifty thousands words
in thirty days. It may be easier to think of it as five thousand words every
three days, or only one thousand, six hundred and sixty-six and one third words
per day. Many people complain of lack of spare time, but think about it, and
you'll realise that we always fill up our spare time with frivolous activities,
such as entertainment, games, family and civics. Cut out those other
time-wasters, and you'll find time to write a novel, I promise.
Veteran wrimos have many tips for bulking up work count, such as using
two-word phrases (such as “word count”) in place of more commonly accepted
one-word terms (such as “wordcount”). Another is using whole-word number
expressions (such as “one thousand, six hundred and sixty-six and one third“)
in place of more simple numeric expressions (such as “1666–1/3”). Yet another
is to use plenty of compound constructions, and repeat yourself in clever and
creative ways that disguise the fact that you're just saying the same thing in
a different manner. Superfluous, redundant and extraneous words also help pad
out the wordcount, as do strings of very short words.
Sure, these rules are contrary to the habits of good writing. But one
benefit of the experience, as in the film Brewster's
Millions, is to get those bad habits, such as gratuitous use of mostly
irrelevant allegorical references, out of your system.
Those who take this on should try to have fun, but understand that it
can be real work, too. (There are tools to help with this.) You should be
determined to push yourself to catch up to your minimum wordcount no matter how
tired you are, but to avoid exhaustion, stop when you've reached your daily
goal, even if you still have more to say.
And with that, I've now hit exactly 1667 words. Goodbye!
