From Mary Robinette Kowal’s blog:

I recently overheard some professional writers talking about NaNoWriMo and a number of them thought it was a waste of time and that the folks who did it were wannabes.

Bullshit.

Okay, I’ll admit it, I’m one of those guys who thinks NaNoWriMo is a waste of time. For myself and writers exactly like me. See, I don’t begrudge people getting excited about writing, or taking part in NaNoWriMo, but I encourage quality over quantity in my personal creative endeavours and NaNoWriMo discourages such thinking. In my opinion, it’s better to write a really good 6,000 word short story over the span of a month than a shitty 50,000 word novel.

Of course, that’s assuming that the 50,000 word novel is shitty. Kowal, on the other hand, has a very different opinion: her debut novel, released to much critical acclaim, started life as a NaNoWriMo project.

I’ve “won” NaNoWriMo three times and gave myself that structure for a fourth novel because I like writing to a deadline.

Here’s how I approached NaNoWriMo when I wrote Shades of Milk and Honey.

• I spend the months leading up to November making plans.
• I cranked out the first 50,000 in November, adjusting the plan as necessary.
• I stopped. Reread what I’d written and evaluated the overall structure.
• I wrote the remaining part of the novel over a three-month period, which involved throwing out six chapters equaling 20,000 words.
• Edited.

The point of NaNoWriMo isn’t to have a finished, ready-to-submit novel on December 1. It’s to get that first draft down on the page and stop talking about writing it someday.

Similarly, John Scalzi has some stern words for those who shake their head at NaNoWriMo contributors:

One of the kvetches I’ve seen from the pro set about NaNoWriMo is that writing a novel only in one month, once a year, is not the way pros do it, and it sets a bad example for up and coming writers. And my own response to that is, well, maybe that’s not how you do it. But you know what, in 2009 I wrote one novel, and I wrote in about five weeks very much on a NaNoWriMo plan of writing a certain volume of words per day, and then for the rest of the year I did and wrote other things. I have to say it worked out pretty well for me. And I’m fairly sure I qualify as a pro. I mean, I’ll have to check. But for now let’s assume I am.

[…]

Is it going to work for everyone? No. Is it going to be useful for everyone? No. But it’s going to be useful for some, and that’s fine – the ones it’s not useful for will find some other way to climb that mountain. Meanwhile the skills that those it works for learn — write every day, keep writing, get that story done – are skills that are transferable outside of the NaNoWriMo context and will be a benefit when that new writer, having completed the task of writing 50,000 words in one month, decides to try to write 100,000. In April. Or whenever. Yes, there may be some people who fetishize NaNoWriMo or take less than useful lessons from it (“Novels must be 50,000 words! They must only be written in November!”), but let’s entertain the notion that this will be more about those particular people than it is about NaNoWriMo.

And that’s where I was always getting caught up. Writing’s such an insular experience, especially for aspiring authors–most of whom don’t have the opportunity to rub elbows with dozens of other writers at conferences or in the online space–that it’s so easy to forget how diverse we all are in our motivations, techniques and goals. NaNoWriMo won’t ever be right for me as a writer. But, if it encourages and enables someone like Kowal (an established and lauded short fiction writer) to begin and eventually complete a debut novel like Shades of Milk and Honey, it’s hard not to find value in the process. Maybe the end result of most NaNoWriMo experiments are unmitigated disasters, but the confidence potentially derived from those failures could be worth years of rejected short stories.

So, what are your experiences with NaNoWriMo? Have you written a story? Given up after a few days? Found fame and fortune as a result? I’d love to hear stories.

Charles Yu’s How To Live Safely In A Science Fiction Universe was released earlier this year to great critical acclaim and has begun showing up on Best of 2010 lists around the web.

Root canal is one fifty, give or take, depending on who’s doing it to you. A migraine is two hundred.

Not that I get the money. The company gets it. What I get is twelve dollars an hour, plus reimbursement for painkillers. Not that they work.

I feel pain for money. Other people’s pain. Physical, emotional, you name it.

Pain is an illusion, I know, and so is time, I know, I know. I know. The shift manager never stops reminding us. Doesn’t help, actually. Doesn’t help when you are on your third broken leg of the day.

His latest short story, Standard Loneliness Package is available from Lightspeed Magazine. He was also recently interviewed on Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy.

The Mad Hatter is reporting that Patrick Rothfuss has turned in the final manuscript for his hotly anticipated novel, The Wise Man’s Fear, the sequel to The Name of the Wind:

Last week Patrick Rothfuss mentioned The Wise Man’s Fear was nearly done, but I kept my squee in check. Gollancz just confirmed that the manuscript has been recevived so all systems are go to have the book out for the announced March 1st release in the states from DAW and Gollancz in the UK.

Uhh? Squee! Wonderful news. When Rothfuss first hit the scene, it was reported that both sequels in the Kingkiller Chronicles trilogy were complete and would follow The Name of the Wind on a yearly basis. The problem arose when Rothfuss looked at those manuscripts and realized they weren’t up to snuff with his debut novel and would require extensive (almost complete, I would hazard to say) re-writes. I’m sure we can all agree that the book will be well worth the wait (or, I suppose, an unmitigated disaster finally pushed out the door by his publisher because it’s unsalvageable… but I doubt it, Rothfuss is too much of a professional for that.) What a great way to start the day!

Copyedits still need done, but galleys are supposedly in production (I’ve already put my left kidney on the black market, in hopes of attaining one) and all signs point to Rothfuss and Daw Books hitting their scheduled March 1st, 2011 release date!

The Tor Books cover:

And the small run PS Publishing cover:

Greymane believed he’d outrun his past. He now ran a school for swordsmanship in Falar and was looking forward to becoming fat and lazy. With him was Kyle, though the plains youth was not quite so contented with civilian life outside the mercenary company the Crimson Guard. Yet it is not so easy to disappear when you are an ex-Fist of the Malazan Empire, especially one denounced and under a death-sentence from that very Empire.

For there is a new Emperor on the throne of Malaz, and his thoughts turn to the lingering drain of blood and treasure that is the failed invasion of the Korel subcontinent. In the record vaults beneath Unta, the Imperial capital, lie the answers to that disaster. And out of this buried history surfaces the name Stonewielder.

In Korel, Lord Protector Hiam, commander of the Stormguard, faces the potential annihilation of all that he loves as with the blood of his few remaining men and a crumbling stone wall that has seen better days, he labours to stave off the sea-borne Stormriders who would destroy his lands.

Meanwhile, religious war has broken out all across these lands as the local cult of the Blessed Lady, who has stood firm for millennia against the assaults of the Stormriders, seeks to stamp out all rivals; a champion refuses to stand against the alien ‘Riders’ and takes up arms in rebellion; and a local magistrate innocently pursuing the mystery of a series of murders is brought to the very heart of a far larger and far more terrifying ancient crime that has stained the entire subcontinent.

It’s interesting to see how they parallel each other in subject, but are utterly different in tone. The PS Publishing cover has better art, but it looks like a Patrick O’Brian, rather than a novel heavily entrenched in the farthest reaches of Epic Fantasy. Alternatively, the Tor Books edition suits the tone of the series, but I’m not a huge fan of the CG-heavy artstyle – though, of course, it fits in well with the rest of the Malazan novels.

The Internet’s abuzz with the release of Towers of Midnight, the penultimate volume in Robert Jordan’s (and Brandon Sanderson’s, to be fair) Wheel of Time series. I don’t have a review myself (but I *do* have an interview with Sanderson), so I thought it might be worthwhile to round up a few of the early reviews, almost all of which are positive.

I haven’t read any of them myself (besides the quotes I’ve pulled), so beware of spoilers!

• Neth Space
  

  I really enjoyed Towers of Midnight as I imagine most fans will. A lot happens, many theories die an agonizing death and many play out pretty well as anticipated. What may be a bit more unexpected are the new things we see – the end is nigh, but there is a lot left to happen. Some characters people want to see aren’t to be found, some resolutions we are begging for still remain, but this is a book of action. There are issues, and it certainly isn’t the thematically coherent volume that The Gathering Storm was. However, it is a book to bring laughter and tears to legions of fans. The biggest tears of all because of the ending – no, not that, but because this book basically ends grasping to the edge of a cliff. The resolutions we get are great, but I can’t help but beg to know what’s going to happen next – bring on A Memory of Light.

• Fantasy Book Critic
  

  With its emphasis on character development, exciting pace, and large cast of characters, Towers of Midnight is the Wheel of Time book fans have been waiting for since The Shadow Rising. The amount of ground covered in a single novel is staggering, and if Towers of Midnight is any indication as to what awaits us in the forthcoming A Memory of Light, the end, while bittersweet, is sure to be incredible.

• Tor.com

  Too many spoilers to pull a quote! Head here if you want to be spoiled or you’ve finished the novel.

• Grasping for the Wind
  

  Ultimately, Towers of Midnight is a significant departure from The Gathering Storm in terms of narrative style that moves with more alacrity than its predecessor, yet that has fewer reveals and poignant scenes. It is not going to be considered the best book of the series, but neither is it the worst. At the very least, the reader will feel a real sense of closure to some longstanding elements, with enough left over that A Memory of Light still has lots of material to cover.

• Fantasy Literature
  

  Like The Gathering Storm, Towers of Midnight is a very quick, effortless read, no small achievement for a nearly-900-page book (though it probably would have been better at 700-750). Unlike the prior book though, Towers of Midnight really moves the big story forward and by the end there’s a sense of bated breath as events and characters start to narrow to a point. Those who have stayed fans throughout will, I think, find that Sanderson is doing a credible and respectable job bringing it home. Those who, like myself, have become somewhat ambivalent lately and are reading more to finish and “just find out how it ends” will be happy for how smoothly and speedily Sanderson gets us closer to that point.

• Ain’t it Cool News
  

  Towers of Midnight is a sliver of a sliver, a single act in a work that’s almost overwhelming in its scope and complexity. Sanderson doesn’t buckle under the weight, but then again Gathering Storm and Towers of Midnight were the easy part. The real test for Sanderon is going to come a year from now when the final volume drops. Then we’ll see a whole different kind of Final Battle, this one in the hearts and minds of fans who have been waiting their whole lives with expectations that no author could possibly live up to. All of the blame will fall to him, not Jordan, if he doesn’t measure up. I’m guessing that for Sanderson, nothing waiting in Shayol Ghul could be as terrifying. Anticipation cuts both ways.

• The Wertzone
  

  Many events unfold that people have been expecting for years (and yes, we learn the answer to a long-standing but utterly irrelevant mystery that Wheel of Time fans have furiously debated for over a decade), but Jordan’s plotting skills and Sanderson’s writing means that there are still plenty of big surprises to come, some of them almost strokes of genius in how they were set up beforehand.

  Towers of Midnight (****½) clears the decks of a lot of dead wood and brings us almost to the end. Some minor issues mar what could have been the best book of the series, but there is nevertheless the feeling that we have been set up for a huge finale. Time will tell if Sanderson can deliver on that.

• The OF Blog
  

  Doubtless, most fans of the WoT series are just excited to discover that “stuff happens!” It is true that on a plot level, there are several important reveals that either further or conclude several plot threads, some of which had been left hanging since the earliest volumes of this series. For those that treat this series as merely an extended Wikipedia summary, doubtless the developments here (from the starting of major combat operations up north to battles in the world of dreams and one male character growing a pair and admitting his own nature to a long-expected rescue of a character left for dead eight volumes ago) make Towers of Midnight an exciting must-read for them. But for those readers such as myself who wish there would an elegance to the writing or at least a sound structure that limits herky-jerkiness to a minimum, this book perhaps might be one of the most poorly-written volumes in a series that is infamous for its sometimes-execrable prose.

• Elitist Book Reviews
  

  In THE TOWERS OF MIDNIGHT, Brandon Sanderson is tasked with cleaning up a huge number of loose ends that should have been taken care of forever ago. His no-nonsense narrative helps overcome this portion of the story that feels like a laundry list. Brandon is working with the deck that was given to him, and he is doing amazing. Are there problems in this novel? Heavens yes. Does it have some awesome stuff? Oh yeah. Battles are great as usual. Rand is amazing. The secondary characters are better than the main characters in many cases. It is a Wheel of Time novel. There is going to be lots of frustrations, and lots of different stuff that will appeal to a variety of fans.

So, then, there you are. Expect more reviews to appear over the next couple of weeks, especially from UK bloggers, most of whom weren’t provided with review copies. If you’ve got a review or know of a review, let me know and I’ll add it to the list!