Bad Advice: nano edition

Two words: hell no.

November is upon us again, which makes this a good time to throw some shade at National Novel Writing Month, aka NaNoWriMo.

Let’s agree that it’s well-intended. The idea, apparently, is that lots of people can’t have the experience of writing a novel unless a climate is set up to encourage them. It’s contained within a calendar month, so it gives you a deadline for motivation and it promises not to drag you into a bottomless pit — come December, you are released! Add a dash of gamification and hey presto, we’re writin’ some novels now!

If you’re someone who took the plunge because of NaNoWriMo, and you’ve gone on to develop your craft and you do the work, for realsies, which you might never have tried without the push that this annual event provided, congratulations. None of this is directed at you.

But if you’re less of a statistical anomaly, then NaNoWriMo has encouraged you in all the wrong ways, save one. It encourages writing without a plan. It uses word count as the sole metric of productivity. It’s the worst kind of democratization, the kind that achieves inclusion by lowering or eliminating standards. For certain definitions of “writing a novel,” anyone really can do it. So for the unserious wannabe whose sole aspiration as a writer is to claim to be one, it’s ideal. (What’s the one good thing? It demands that you write every day. [But it only cares during November.])

To write something good, don’t do it in a mad sprint between two preselected dates. Being an author requires dedication. It requires that you write every day all year. It makes you smarter, because it’s such a workout for the thinking-muscle. Set yourself some standards, and then revise them upwards every so often. Define your own schedule, with milestones and medium-range goals.

Finding motivation in the November event is fine. Giving this whole writing thing a shot during NaNo is fine — gotta start sometime. But there’s a much bigger world, and fixating on artificial deadlines and scorekeeping will keep you from reaching it.