{"id":4983,"date":"2010-11-12T10:40:15","date_gmt":"2010-11-12T18:40:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/aidanmoher.com\/blog\/?p=4983"},"modified":"2010-11-12T10:43:19","modified_gmt":"2010-11-12T18:43:19","slug":"an-aside-mary-robinette-kowal-and-john-scalzi-defend-nanowrimo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/aidanmoher.com\/blog\/2010\/11\/news\/an-aside-mary-robinette-kowal-and-john-scalzi-defend-nanowrimo\/","title":{"rendered":"An Aside | Mary Robinette Kowal and John Scalzi Defend NaNoWriMo"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/aidanmoher.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/05\/shades-of-milk-and-honey-by-mary-robinette-kowal.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/aidanmoher.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/05\/shades-of-milk-and-honey-by-mary-robinette-kowal-197x300.jpg\" alt=\"Shades of Milk and Honey by Mary Robinette Kowal\" title=\"Shades of Milk and Honey by Mary Robinette Kowal\" width=\"197\" height=\"300\" class=\"alignright size-medium wp-image-3723\" srcset=\"https:\/\/aidanmoher.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/05\/shades-of-milk-and-honey-by-mary-robinette-kowal-197x300.jpg 197w, https:\/\/aidanmoher.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/05\/shades-of-milk-and-honey-by-mary-robinette-kowal-493x750.jpg 493w, https:\/\/aidanmoher.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/05\/shades-of-milk-and-honey-by-mary-robinette-kowal.jpg 673w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 197px) 100vw, 197px\" \/><\/a>From <a href=\"http:\/\/www.maryrobinettekowal.com\/journal\/shades-of-milk-and-honey-was-a-nanowrimo-novel\/\">Mary Robinette Kowal&#8217;s blog<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>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.<\/p>\n<p>Bullshit.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Okay, I&#8217;ll admit it, I&#8217;m one of those guys who thinks <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nanowrimo.org\/\">NaNoWriMo<\/a> is a waste of time. <strong>For myself and writers <em>exactly<\/em> like me.<\/strong> See, I don&#8217;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&#8217;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.<\/p>\n<p>Of course, that&#8217;s assuming that the 50,000 word novel <em>is<\/em> 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.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>I\u2019ve \u201cwon\u201d NaNoWriMo three times and gave myself that structure for a fourth novel because I like writing to a deadline.<\/p>\n<p>Here\u2019s how I approached NaNoWriMo when I wrote Shades of Milk and Honey.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>I spend the months leading up to November making plans.<\/li>\n<li>I cranked out the first 50,000 in November, adjusting the plan as necessary.<\/li>\n<li>I stopped. Reread what I\u2019d written and evaluated the overall structure.<\/li>\n<li>I wrote the remaining part of the novel over a three-month period, which involved throwing out six chapters equaling 20,000 words.<\/li>\n<li>Edited.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The point of NaNoWriMo isn\u2019t to have a finished, ready-to-submit novel on December 1. It\u2019s to get that first draft down on the page and stop talking about writing it someday.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Similarly, <a href=\"http:\/\/whatever.scalzi.com\/2010\/11\/11\/nanowrimo-and-kvetching\/\">John Scalzi<\/a> has some stern words for those who shake their head at NaNoWriMo contributors:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>One of the kvetches I\u2019ve 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\u2019s 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\u2019m fairly sure I qualify as a pro. I mean, I\u2019ll have to check. But for now let\u2019s assume I am.<\/p>\n<p>[&#8230;]<\/p>\n<p>Is it going to work for everyone? No. Is it going to be useful for everyone? No. But it\u2019s going to be useful for some, and that\u2019s fine \u2013 the ones it\u2019s not useful for will find some other way to climb that mountain. Meanwhile the skills that those it works for learn \u2014 write every day, keep writing, get that story done \u2013 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 (\u201cNovels must be 50,000 words! They must only be written in November!\u201d), but let\u2019s entertain the notion that this will be more about those particular people than it is about NaNoWriMo.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>And that&#8217;s where I was always getting caught up. Writing&#8217;s such an insular experience, especially for aspiring authors&#8211;most of whom don&#8217;t have the opportunity to rub elbows with dozens of other writers at conferences or in the online space&#8211;that it&#8217;s so easy to forget how diverse we all are in our motivations, techniques and goals. NaNoWriMo won&#8217;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 <strong>Shades of Milk and Honey<\/strong>, it&#8217;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.<\/p>\n<p>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&#8217;d love to hear stories.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>From Mary Robinette Kowal&#8217;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&#8217;ll admit it, I&#8217;m one of those guys who thinks NaNoWriMo is a waste of time. For myself&#8230;  <a class=\"excerpt-read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/aidanmoher.com\/blog\/2010\/11\/news\/an-aside-mary-robinette-kowal-and-john-scalzi-defend-nanowrimo\/\" title=\"ReadAn Aside | Mary Robinette Kowal and John Scalzi Defend NaNoWriMo\">Read more &raquo;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":40,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":""},"categories":[39],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4983","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v14.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"http:\/\/aidanmoher.com\/blog\/2010\/11\/news\/an-aside-mary-robinette-kowal-and-john-scalzi-defend-nanowrimo\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"An Aside | Mary Robinette Kowal and John Scalzi Defend NaNoWriMo - A Dribble of Ink\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"From Mary Robinette Kowal&#8217;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. 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