Unfinished National Novel Writing Month Project
(November 2011)
National Novel Writing Month (or NaNoWriMo for people who prefer contractions that look like a mixed-up periodic table) is one of those Internet things that feels very much of its time (the mid-two-thousands, in this case), but seemingly continues to this day, avoiding the fizzle met by most online trends. For those unawares, it’s an open challenge to write a fifty-thousand word novel from beginning to end in the month of November, with a website that you can register on to keep track of your progress. It’s basically just a hobbyist thing, a “fun” activity to focus your free time on if you consider yourself to be in any way creatively inclined. Many people who don’t do anything particularly artistic in any of the other eleven months will think they can get to that fifty-thousand, and then either will or won’t, no harm, no foul. It ostensibly represents online community projects at their most benign, although I don’t know, maybe there’s some drama behind the scenes that I don’t know about because why would I look something like that up. To what end would that serve, I ask you.
Being a burgeoning writer-type person, this seemed like something I should take part in—my first attempt was in high school, and I did not complete it (because of hormones, probably.) In 2010, during the interim year where I had finished a university degree and was waiting to see if I would move on to a graduate program, I decided to have another go at it—this time, while I didn’t meet the 50K word goal, I did finish the story at around 43K, and that was good enough for me. The next year, having failed to get into a graduate program, I decided to try yet again, possibly emboldened by my success the previous year—I did not finish it. In any case, like most of my older writing, I think all three projects—finished or unfinished—are abominations, and they will be left to rot deep in my files forevermore.
But making something good was never the point of taking the NaNoWriMo plunge—the point was the attempt, and the process. All three attempts took place when I was mostly writing casually on the Internet, on message boards and personal blogs (and in the latter two, the student newspaper), and they likely contained all the annoying habits that I had in those days. Much like my one creative writing class, these faux-novellas acted as a sort of exorcism for those annoying habits, and very gradually I would shed them and change the way I approached writing, to hopefully become somewhat readable. Basically, by having a place I could put down the ideas that sounded so good in my head, I could see how they were, in fact, so rancid.
They also sort of reflect my moods at the time. The one finished story was written in the year where I seemingly wanted to do all the things I thought I should do, and that included writing a terrible short novel for nobody—I had the motivation, even if not the talent. The unfinished one was attempted in what was a very emotionally challenging year for me, and reminds me of how I retreated to previous happy times or successes in an attempt to have something going on, but could only do it halfheartedly. The failed NaNoWriMo attempt coincided with a lot of my approaches to writing changing—I left a lot of my old venues behind (including old blogs) and would soon transition to different sorts of writing, the kind that would eventually evolve into what I’m doing here. In a way, the unfinished novel was a clean break from the past, allowing me a chance to start over. It would take another short while before I would try my hand at fiction again, but by that time, I had a slightly better grasp of what I wanted to do.
These projects helped me realize a few other things as well. There was an online editorial I read years ago where the author bemoaned that NaNoWriMo represented some egoistic desire to become a writer, as contrasted to the more communal act of being a reader. At the time, I could see some of the points—the “well, anyone can do this” dilettante undercurrent is a little demeaning to writers who put their all into their craft and profession, and it could certainly feel like the prose equivalent of preferring the sound of your own voice. On the other hand, one thing that I’ve come to recognize is that, even though I put my all into my craft, I really shouldn’t feel threatened by people who create things more casually, because in the end they’re doing it for the same reason I am—because it’s enjoyable. Where once I had some lofty ideas about writing being a higher calling in danger of being diluted, now I recognize that, in the end, it’s a constructive activity that gives purpose and pleasure to people’s lives, and who am I to take that away from others? I’ve softened quite a bit on stuff like fan fiction for that reason—not everyone wants to take part in these things because they have big ambitions, and that’s fine.
NaNoWriMo is probably meant to primarily instill the motivation to start a project and stick with until completion (and to work under a deadline), even if that doesn’t always survive past November. In any case, it definitely helped me learn some important things: that it is possible to finish something of that magnitude, and that writing could potentially be a fun thing to do, with or without some imaginary deadline and a JPEG badge at the finish line. It served as an important stepping stone for me, and it could just as easily be that for someone else—or it could just be something to do. Either way is A-OK by me.
A Scrapbook of Infinite Noise 