NaNoWiMo Makes No Sense, Just Like Its Abreviation
Even though November is National Novel Writing Month, it is now nearly the end of November, and I am no closer to having a finished novel than when I started. Every single year I consider it, and every single year, plans fall through. At the end of October, it crossed my mind, but by the time NaNoWiMo rolled around, I decided against it.
Why?
Quality writing takes time. I've never met an author who wrote an entire novel in a month. I don't think I've talked to many authors who have written an entire novel in a year. Of the professional authors I've met, the fastest I've heard of finishing a novel was in eighteen months, and that was because they had paid time off from their university job, and a tight deadline from the publisher. I wrote my first novel in about a year, and paid the price later. Granted, I was pretty young when I wrote it, and some of the mistakes I made then I would change now. However, by the end of the novel, I put less thought into the chapters and events. I gave less explanation on what was going on. I rushed, because I'd wanted to be finished in July, but now it was December, and I still wasn't done.
Ideas strike when they want to strike, not when you want them to. When I wrote my first novel, I got the idea from playing a video game right after my sixteenth birthday. With my second novel, it was after reading something written on Facebook by a family whose child had special needs. Inspiration comes from people, from photographs, from something someone said once and I wasn't able to forget it, from current events, from driving--but not from me sitting at the computer telling myself, "Alright, let's go!"
I've got other "ish" to do. Seriously. It does take dedication to write a novel, but there's a lot that I dedicate my time to other than novel writing.
NaNoWiMo is a good starting place for those who need motivation to get started on their novel, but to think you'll craft an entire book start-to-finish in thirty days is a tad bit unrealistic. Writing is a one-word-at-a-time process that can't be rushed--so don't rush it!
Unless you've got someone paying you big bucks to get 200 pages out in thirty days. In that case, disregard everything above, and write like a bat outta hell.
Love and light,
Reina M
