December has arrived! I made a commitment to myself to use the month of November to really crack down on writing my novel. I sat in front of my computer and…once again crashed and burned.
For those uninitiated, November is National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo, for short. In the penultimate month of the year, writers from around the world set out on an ambitious goal to write a novel – that is, write the bare minimum requirements to classify something as a novel, which is usually agreed upon to be 50,000 words.
And every year, for the past several years, I’ve challenged myself to accomplish this goal. And every year I’ve fallen woefully short (read this to see what happened in 2018).
This year was more of the same. However, after failing to reach the 50,000-word benchmark yet again, I’ve made a startling realization: I don’t want to do NaNoWriMo anymore.
Here are the reasons why I will be bowing out from NaNoWriMo in 2020 and beyond.
NaNoWriMo is No Longer Special
When I first discovered NaNoWriMo, it was this mythical grassroots movement to take back the dreary month of November and to transform it into a month of achieving one’s goals and dreams; the goal being to finally get off one’s butt and to simply “write the damn thing”.
It used to be this big thing; as the weather grew colder (or warmer if you live below the Equator), readers knew that November was just around the corner, and they would use October (or “Preptober”) to plan out their next steps so that they didn’t wind up “pantsing” their novel idea halfway through the 30 days.
Now there are these new events called “Camp NaNoWriMo”, which take place in April and July. I’m still not entirely certain of the purpose of Camp NaNoWriMo, but from what I’m to understand, they are described as virtual “writers’ retreats”.
It’s supposed to be a more chill, relaxed environment where fellow writers interact and support one another in their goal to create a novel, or perhaps something less hefty, like a short story, play, or fanfiction.
The idea is that people would login into the website similar to how they would do during NaNoWriMo, but instead of filling out a profile and recording daily word counts (which is still possible), Camp NaNoWrimo participants create “cabins”, where they would invite a group of likeminded writers and support each other through a battery of inspirational quotes, prompts and other such pursuits.
My main issue with the Camp NaNoWriMo is that its entire existence feels less like an extension of NaNoWriMo and more like the anthithesis of its very purpose.
It appears the events were created to appease to young writers, or to entice writers who were against the stringent restictions set that dictated you HAD to write 50,000 words and it HAD to be for a novel. Even I would occasionally buck the rule and would write for my fanfic or for some other project.
But by creating multiple months similar to the main event, it dilutes the impact of writing in November at all. Like, why bother?
In 2018; I challenged myself to write a first draft of my novel. I buckled down and I did it. But this was in May; NaNoWriMo isn’t so much about writing the 50,000 words as it is developing the discipline to simply write and to do it consistently.
This is why I still believe NaNoWriMo is still worth it for young writers. For more experienced individuals, both NaNoWriMo and Camp NaNoWriMo, with all its extracurriculars (prompts and sprints and the like)…it just seems like a colossal waste of time.
NaNoWriMo is getting too commercial
I get it. NaNoWriMo is a non-profit organization; hence, it has to derive a source of income from somewhere. Why not approach its thousands of followers and ask them for the occasional donation to keep afloat?
Maybe it’s always been happening and I’m just more cognizant of it this year than in previous years, but logging into the NaNoWriMo website, it felt more like they were trying to get something out of me than offering me genuine writing motivation.
I liked it better when it was just a movement. This aggressive push in my email inbox for donations and to buy NaNoWriMo-branded items like a mug or a t-shirt really left a bad taste in my mouth this year.
I’ve Changed my Mindset on Writing
…and it couldn’t have been more timely. Though I went in with the intention of totally crushing NaNoWriMo this year, something in my mindset on writing shifted sometime around November 1st.
Perhaps it was when I challenged myself to do twelve weeks of morning pages; after I was finished, I realized how invaluable it was to accomplish the exercise.
The repeated, daily showing up to write 3 pages (even if it was 3 pages of total, unpublishable garbage) forced me to hone my craft. The sheer consistency of the practice made me realize that I didn’t NEED an arbitrary month in the year to focus all of my writing energies: writing should be a perpetual habit.
Another shift in my mindset occurred when I made money by publishing “Waiting Room”.
In that instance, I was convinced I could transform my writing hobby into a profitable side-hustle, and began pre-empting writing time set aside for NaNoWriMo to instead research and scope out markets that would actually pay for my time and writing skillset.
Though I wasn’t writing toward my novel, I was still writing a lot, almost daily. Even better, I was actually making money doing it. I set a monetary goal to achieve by the end of November, and surprisingly reached that goal before the 30th.
I still like my novel idea, and I still fully intend to publish it down the line, but I don’t see why I need to put all my eggs in one basket. Why should I place all my hopes and dreams on the success of my debut novel, when I could sell smaller short stories to publications, and take on odd freelance writing gigs on the side?
I’m writing my novel because I believe in it. I don’t want its creative process to be burdened with the pressure to rake in money.
It means more to me to take my time and write a good story than to blast through the shortest path to profit, or to rush a concept to make a contest deadline. That’s not my writing M.O. – at least, not anymore.
So what do you think? Did you succeed or fail at NaNoWriMo this year? Will you participate again next year? And did you read any NaNoWriMo books to get motivated? Let me know in the comments below!
Hi Sylvie,
I feel bad that I don’t read as many blog articles as I should, but had to pluck this one from the scrap pile and give it a read. I see a lot here that I agree with, and even though I champion NaNo people, I must agree that it has changed very much in a few years. It’s turned into a donation box, but for what purpose nobody seems to know. If they put that money toward opening a publishing house it might regain some traction, just my two cents.
I didn’t participate this year because there’s just too much on my plate, and my hard drive is already stuffed full of novels in various phases of development. But I also shudder to think about going to another meetup. People show up under the banner of finishing their novel, and instead spend most of the time talking about preferred pronouns and what they are doing for November that involves ditching the “strict” timeline constraints or structuring. I wonder why some of these people even bother, other than having an excuse to drop by the local Panera Bread Co. and chatter the whole time. Sometimes it’s a nice push, but I received the whole course of progression emails this year and I never logged into the site. That was another turn-off for me. Nobody is integrating the data collected on the website. It almost seems that nobody at NaNo cares about anything but selling stickers at this point.
It’s become a social event more than a writing group, and I don’t need a team to write a novel fast. I write fast because if I don’t, then my writing becomes another unfinished scrap on the disk that will never be touched again. My finished drafts I can return to whenever I like. A half written story idea may as well have never been written. Just my thoughts.
Yes! Exactly! Glad I wasn’t the only one who felt this way.
When I first participated in NaNoWriMo there was this great excitement and build-up to participating; now it feels as though the main event has taken a backseat to all the superfluous extras. The prompts, the sprints, the forum banter about finishing the novel when a person COULD ACTUALLY BE FINISHING A NOVEL.
I don’t get Camp NaNoWriMo. Or Preptober. Pretty soon NaNoWriMo will encompass every month of the year, and aspiring authors can spend 11 of them building up to getting nothing accomplished at all.
Or maybe I’m just old. Maybe NaNoWriMo’s a young person’s sport and I’m too grizzled and hardened to participate in the community and buy branded tea cozies or socks or whatever.
Thank you so much for your two cents! 😀
All I know is sending out emails under the NaNoWriMo masthead using the NaNoWriMo mailing lists the are dedicated solely to extremist left-wing politics is costing them a lot of participants. I’m reading/hearing “jumped the shark” quite a bit.
This is exactly how I feel this year. I actually deleted my account half way through November. The move to a “year round writing” focus really took away from what was special about Nano. The switch to a different message board program decimated what used to be a great board system. I loved the fresh wipe of all posts to start over each October. You weren’t tied to what you were and what you did the year before. Now there’s maybe 20 or so new posts every few days rather than hundreds a day. People don’t offer research info anymore, and opinions are all “It’s your book, do what you want”. If you commented in a thread years ago, it’s still there, so you don’t need to post again.
But now everything is watered down. November isn’t what it used to be. It’s sad because I miss the camaraderie. But it’s so hard to find there now.
I feel you, Jen. Here’s hoping the NaNoWriMo movement is revamped to get back to basics. Abolish the camps and get back to the dedication to the 30-day novel sprints.
Then again, I’ve never won NaNoWriMo so what do I know, haha. Thanks for reading and commenting!