Why I NaNo

For anyone who doesn’t know, National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo, or “NaNo” for short) is a yearly event that challenges writers to write a 50,000-word novel in one month. It’s a nonprofit organization, thousands of people do it each year—and it has both its supporters and its detractors.

Some people claim that trying to write 50,000 words in a month is too fast—that people inevitably care more about quantity than quality, and NaNo’s main effect is the production of a lot of bad writing that’s then sent off to agents way too soon. There’s also the point that 50,000 words isn’t a novel—it’s half a novel. The NaNo organization tries to get you to feel like you accomplished something by finishing the challenge—it will even print your“book” for you if you do the allotted words in the allotted time.  Personally, I think that's really premature.

And yet I do NaNo, and I support it. Here’s why.

First, NaNo is a tool. Like any other writing tool, what you get out of it depends on how you use it. It isn’t bad or good in and of itself.  Sure, you can go around claiming you “finished a book” after completing the challenge. But really, finishing 50,000 words of your novel is only a tiny fraction of the work you need to do in order to get it agent-ready. A lot of writers know this. I don’t believe it’s a good way to get a finished book in a month. But I do think it’s a great way to kick-start a new draft.

Second, there is no “right way” to write a novel. Different methods work for different people. There may be a few geniuses out there who have produced amazing work at NaNo that needs little editing. I doubt there are many. But who am I to tell them their work is crap just because they wrote it during NaNo?

I’ve done NaNo every year for the past four years. I do it with friends, and so far, every year I’ve completed the challenge. This year, I almost decided not to do it. Mainly because of the time commitment and the fact that I currently have four novels in various stages of edit that are more of a priority.

But I changed my mind—because my friends and I came up with a new way to use NaNo this year. We’re all committed to writing novels that have strong romance components—yet we all feel that our romance threads in previous drafts haven’t lived up to what we hoped for. This may be because we keep trying to do too many things with our drafts. They’re romance, but they’re also fantasy. With a historical component. And zombies. You get the drift.

So this year, we’re all writing romances for NaNo. Just romance. Some of it is fan fic. All of it is going to be really, really simple. No zombies, no vampires, no complications. And personally, I’m not going to go nuts trying to meet the 50,000-word mark this year, because I’m also going to be editing an old project and querying another old project while I do this. If this NaNo goes well, I’ll get some much-needed practice in honing my ability to write romance. If it goes amazingly well, I’ll get a draft of a story I’ll actually want to finish and query eventually. But I’m not going to be bothering any agents with my NaNo story come December 1. Because for me, that’s not what NaNo is for.