(Intentionally mildly pretentious image of me writing? Check!)<\/p>\n
I wasn\u2019t going to do it. You couldn\u2019t have made me. There was no way in hell you were going to get me to throw in my hat into the \u201cHey guys it\u2019s time for NaNoWriMo!\u201d ring if you held me at gunpoint. But suddenly, here I am. Of course, it\u2019s one of the biggest events for beginning and amateur authors of the year. Confused about what I\u2019m talking about? No worries, it confused me at first. It\u2019s November! Which means that NaNoWriMo is starting up (hey peeps, it already started by the time you\u2019re reading this!). NaNoWriMo stands for National November Writing Month — go here: http:\/\/nanowrimo.org\/<\/a> — The idea behind this event is to give you, the budding author, or the lazy one, a deadline and timeline to force you into writing a 50,000-word \u2018novel\u2019. It doesn\u2019t have to be good, it doesn\u2019t have to be trash, it just has to be 50,000-words or greater. What do you get for completing this Herculean task you ask? Why absolutely nothing, aside from the soul-affirming knowledge that you finished a 50,000-word novel in THIRTY DAYS. Oh and you have a 50,000-word novel now, of course. Why wasn\u2019t I going to talk about this great idea some genius put together way back in 1999? Because, I don\u2019t like it.<\/p>\n Now, don\u2019t get me wrong I don\u2019t think there is anything wrong with the program. I\u2019ve \u2018tried\u2019 for the last three years. I have a bunch of writer friends who love it, it\u2019s a fun sort of marathon for all us writer nerds, but<\/em><\/strong> it\u2019s not for everyone.<\/p>\n I don\u2019t know about any of you, dear readers, but November might be the most hectic and chaotic month of the year for me. It\u2019s midterm season for many of the students in the US, you have Thanksgiving (American) and the whole month always seems to get really damned full. That\u2019s the first reason I don\u2019t like NaNoWriMo (hence forth Nanowrimo because capitals suck). November is an awfully busy month by dint\u00a0 of not being December, when everyone is home with their families and being far enough from September that school tends to be really crunching down.<\/p>\n My second reason for not liking it? I don\u2019t write in a way that\u2019s conducive to Nanowrimo. I\u2019m a procrastinator by nature \u2013- yes, I\u2019m sorry Sennie but this is not quite late! \u2013- so I need deadlines and Nanowrimo\u2019s fantastic for that, true. Yet while I have proven I can write novel length books at a George RR Martin speed (Seven years from inception to my first ever \u2013- read: crap \u2013- novel is pretty good in my defense) and I know I want to write novel length books, I just don\u2019t like to focus on them. I created a rich and complex world while working on my first book and I love it dearly but it\u2019s big enough, and I was stupid enough, that I have to create languages. Not one, multiple. The number of which will only go up as I explore this wonderful world. World-building is one of my favorite parts of writing, but the words and time I put in to world-building don\u2019t count toward Nanowrimo. The fifteen short stories I run off to record as inspiration hits me don\u2019t count either, sorry me. Part of this is a discipline problem, I should be able to write down the idea for those short stories and move on; I shouldn\u2019t feel the burning desire to write a small essay about the caliber system used by the primary species in my story (because their guns don\u2019t use bullets), or a 100-word history\/bio about the pistol my main character loves\u2026 or the eight other weapons that manufacturer makes and their fire rates, ranges, accuracy, general methods of use and history. But for me, for a long time, that was fun and sometimes that\u2019s all you need.<\/p>\n I wanted to \u2013- read: want to and am still working on \u2013- write novel length piece because it\u2019ll show off all the wonderful world-building I love to do but Nanowrimo has proved to be an actively discouraging experience. Just because I can\u2019t write 1600-words a day for an entire month because my life is busy or I\u2019d rather spend that hour or two crafting a half-dozen civilian corporations that may matter later, but I\u2019m inspired to do them now; I was starting to feel like I was less of a writer than my dear friends who were doing it with me. Which was ridiculous because if you\u2019re not careful I have a forty-five-minute <\/strong>lecture on caliber (I call it TEOIS, which stands for Total Energy Output and Impact Strength) that comes all off the top of my head.<\/p>\n So this is me talking to all those other writers who struggle with Nanowrimo incredibly but know they can stick to a proper writing schedule. That when they sit down and focus, they can punch out a prodigious amount of words in a very short time and have already finished a writing project of some length before. It\u2019s okay<\/em>. Don\u2019t feel bad, Nanowrimo is to help light a fire under people\u2019s asses; it\u2019s not a contest or a measuring stick for writers to beat themselves up with, so don\u2019t. Cheer on your friends who really do try it, help them out and all the while keep chipping away at your own. Do what you love, and do what you\u2019re comfortable with. And HAVE FUN (or at least enjoy emotionally torturing your readers) because that\u2019s why we started writing. We wanted to tell stories bubbling inside of us and we found the written word as our medium.<\/p>\n So keep writing 300-word break downs of every star nation\u2019s ship classes and their traditional and non-tradition tactical and strategic roles\u2026 oh. That\u2019s just me isn\u2019t it? Very well then. How about we end with, keep writing.<\/strong><\/p>\n Shameless plugs:<\/strong><\/p>\n In case you were wondering, my big writing project a 200,000-word, seven-years in the making novel that is very much not for sale and a pair of short stories on Amazon that I self-published because I could.<\/p>\n Check them out:<\/p>\n Jirvaerka Anniversary:<\/p>\n