A Question For All You NaNoers Out There

[queenoftheskies]

Inquiring minds want to know...

Why do you NaNo? What do you get out of NaNo? What makes it work for you?

Do you think that NaNo helps you develop certain skills? Does it help you learn discipline? Does it help you learn to write faster?

This question for you folks that have done NaNo multiple years. Do you find the quality of your NaNo words, words that you write fast, improving year after year?

Your thoughts/feelings on NaNo?

Comments

[peartreealley.livejournal.com]

These days I mostly NaNo out of habit. I've done it all these years and I succumb to peer pressure to do it again :)

I think NaNoWriMo can help build discipline and get writers that only talk about it to actually write, but I see a lot of people who burn out after November, too.

I've done NaNo since 2002. I tend to write fast anyway so I don't see much of a difference from year to year that I don't see in general. (Actually, I think it the last year, my draft quality has gone down overall. Go figure.) NaNo just gives a huge community and a set of rules on top of it.

I think NaNo is wonderful for its intended purpose--get people who want to write, but have only talked about it, writing. But as years go by, I'm not sure it's so appropriate for people who already churn out novels on a regular basis.

Maybe I'm just getting bitter and cranky, though. And despite my misgivings, I'll probably do it again next year :P

[green-knight.livejournal.com]

I'm riding the wave - I'm posting (almost) daily wordcounts and use all that energy around me (apart from queenoftheskies who just writes too much) to write just a couple of hundred words when I don't feel like writing.

Experience has taught me that writing faster than my comfortable speed - right now, because I'm struggling around 800 words a day) will result is *much* worse prose: when I concentrate only on my wordcount, I tend to do the easy bits - dialogue and introspection - and leave out entirely the hard bits (description and outside events moving the story forward). This, as you may guess, is double plus ungood.
The other thing I do when hunting for wordcounts is to dramatize everything that happens. I don't plan or outline (outlining almost killed the current novel, so I definitely won't try it in the future) and I sometimes need to noodle a little to find out what happens next. When I'm in a rush, I write it out on paper, and look, wordcounts. When I'm more sensible, I think about structure and what the scene would achieve, and what is the next _interesting_ thing that happens (thanks, papersky) and leave out the bits that _don't_ move the story forward enough.

Last but not least, I can't write two books at the same time, and putting down a perfectly good project just to comply with some arbitrary rules seems very silly to me.

[green-knight.livejournal.com]

Outlining or not is a totally individual thing. My backbrain is good at resolving situations, and my characters know exactly what is happening to them, I just need to trust my process. I know the flow state you're talking about, and I still do that; but if I press beyond the flow of words, I get worse ones.

As for first drafts being bad - well, yes. But if it's too rough, then I need to sit down and do a second draft entirely from scratch, or else I'll shove a lot of inferior words into it because 'they'll do' hich is a very dangerous state of mind. The other is that some of my most interesting events and plot developments or characterisations come from slowing down and smelling the flowers. If I just rush through it - or worse, if I do the kind of semi-outline that glosses over difficult scenes with 'they look around the city and try to decide whether this is where they'll meet the monsters, but although Fenneth has misgivings, the consensus is that they need to try again' only to go on writing the next scene, I miss a lot of opportunities. I don't know what happens in this city, but it could be important - one of the characters might sustain a minor injury, for instance, or lose some blood which would complicate a spell that's important later when they try to return home. They could find a weapon, or make an observation that the next expedition turns on its head, or they could acquire a clue... the possibilities are endless. If I rush through the scene and write it badly, I'll compromise anything that follows it, and I'll rob my story of a lot of richness and detail, and myself of a lot of plot opportunities, just to get to soemthing that isn't, in the end, all that clearly defined and will need working out *anyway.*

Nine and sixty ways.

(That being the motto of rec.arts.sf.composition, stolen from Kipling's In the Neolithic Age:
There are nine and sixty ways of constructing tribal lays,
*and every single one of them is right*)

[vg-ford.livejournal.com]

I think this is why I tend to do unofficial NaNo. I'm already finishing novels (one, anyways) and I don't want to put that aside (those pesky deadlines!) and pick up a brand new project.

Then again, it gives a fantastic sense of community. It seems like the entire world is writing, at least for November.

[crossbow1.livejournal.com]

My NaNo is NaNot. I got involved in another project (editing my grandmother's memoirs) and gave up on it. But to answer the question, what I get out of NaNo is the wherewithal to actually write something instead of planning to write it "some day." I may only have 3000 words, but it's 3000 words I didn't have before.

[sharigreen.livejournal.com]

This is my second year NaNo'ing. For me, NaNo has helped me learn to intentionally shut off the internal editor. I'm a tweaker, a perpetual polisher, and I used to NEED to edit while I create. I'm much better now at letting the story just emerge, to be revised after the creative blast has gotten words onto the page.

[gategrrl.livejournal.com]

Why do you NaNo? What do you get out of NaNo? What makes it work for you?
(this quote function is COOL!) *ahem*
I do NaNo because I rarely finish projects. I've always wanted to be a writer/storyteller since I was at least four years old. And the challenge was simply too great to not do. It helps when I know there are lots of folks in on it with me.

Do you think that NaNo helps you develop certain skills? Does it help you learn discipline? Does it help you learn to write faster?
Yes, I think it is. Thing is, I want to *improve* my writing. NaNo forces me to think ahead, and it's only been this year that I've seriously started to be able to plan ahead more than I could before. I'm learning that doing a certain amount of thinking ahead does NOT kill my creativity, AND that I MUST sit my butt on a chair and just do it. Can't get away from those facts.

This question for you folks that have done NaNo multiple years. Do you find the quality of your NaNo words, words that you write fast, improving year after year?
Hmm. I guess so. A lot of that depends on whose books I've been reading before I start writing. Influence seeps in there whether I know it's there or not - either in writing style or thinking style or idea origination.

Your thoughts/feelings on NaNo?
I think NaNo is a brilliant idea - and I think the group that Chris Baty was with that year it started was onto something - and he was smart enough to realize what he had, and how it could get folks interested in writing, or thinking about writing, and by way of that, English language/any language skills. Literacy skills. I think my daughter, who is not a big book reader, has expressed interest in doing her own stories. It's not a passive activity like reading sort of is. It gets imaginations running. It promotes TRUSTING your own mind and letting it go where it will.

I think on many levels, NaNo is a fantastic thing. And I especially think that bringing it to younger people is more brilliant; they're the ones who are still learning to think in their formative years, and have their lives ahead of them.

[rhienelleth.livejournal.com]

NaNo is really just an excuse for me to write. A kick in the pants, some years when I need it, to make myself pick up whatever project I haven't been working on.

I actually wasn't going to do it this year. November isn't usually the best time for me to try to churn out lots of words. But this year it just kind of happened. And I think it would have happened regardless, because it was just a coincidence that I wrote the first scene on Nov. 1st, instead of October 29th, for instance. But since it was NaNo, I decided I'd go ahead and us that, and that 50K goal for the end of the month has kept me going on days when I felt like slacking.

I should mention that previous years have seen maybe 20K in the month of November for me, which was why I wasn't going to do it this year. Of course, the year I decide it's not going to work, it mysteriously does.

I'm not a "once a year" novel writer, though. Like shadawyn, I write all the time (though I'm not usually as prolific as she is, or you). Some months are better than others.

Previous NaNo years haven't taught me much in the way of writing, really. But this year it's helped me to turn off my internal editor and just get words down, though I'm not sure if that's NaNo's goal helping with that, or if it's just that this story is driving me to get it out, down on paper, and done. It hasn't helped me learn to write faster, cause I've always been a 2k-5k a day writer, depending on how things are flowing. NaNo is no different. What it has done, as I've said, is made me write on days I don't feel like it. If I can keep doing that, NaNo will officially have taught me something, I suppose. :)

I don't do NaNo..........

[dracschick.livejournal.com]

November has always been a difficult month for me. I prefer to write in the summer.

[hkneale.livejournal.com]

1. It's a goal, a deadline. I work better this way.
2. I get used to writing lots in a little amount of time. I didn't win my first nano because I wasn't used to the pace. Now I am. While it's nebulous that I might not win at this point, that's not because I can't keep up the pace, but because I've got lots of other stuff I need doing, and they're more pressing than nano.
3. Looking at it as a career stepping stone.
4. Yes. It teaches me to write fast.
5. {shrug}. Maybe it helped me learn discipline in the beginning.
6. Fast? Youbetcha. And not just fast, but being able to do cleaner drafts fast.
7. Yes, the quality improves, but that's only me becoming a better writer.
8. I think it's a nice challenge to push writers beyond their envelope of comfort. To improve as writers, we need occasional stuff like that.

[green-knight.livejournal.com]

I think Nano can be great for a lot of people who suffer from problems that can be helped by the discipline and the method - people who 'one day will find the time' or whose inner editor needs training (a well-trained inner editor is a joy to work with and creates much better first drafts, so don't kill them, learn to cooperate), but there are lots of ways in which a writer can push himself. And when you do, it's often *bloody hard work*; which means that the wordcounts drop right down, and there will be much wailing and batting heads against walls. The danger when you concentrate on the 'lots of words' aspect is that the writer will take the easy way out, will not scrap words that are better scrapped, will not rewrite a difficult scene three times until it is right, etc; and in that respect, writing a fast first draft and stretching oneself seem very difficult to console.