Fifteen years ago, I did NaNoWriMo for the first time. In twenty-four days, I wrote the first draft of Even the Score. I won. In 2007, I pulled the mess that was what I had of Joss together, and wrote the first real draft of Queen’s Man.
2008 was Burning Bright. I wrote the 50k, but the book wasn’t done. I got stuck. The next year when NaNo was approaching, I thought I’d go ahead and finish it for NaNo. Instead I got inspired and I wrote the ending in NaNoPubYe’s NaNo warm-up (25k in two weeks) and ended up doing In the Forests of the Night for NaNo 2009.
I wrote over 50,000 words in fifteen days. Two days later, I’d written the entire first draft.
My streak of useable first drafts ended there, alas. I won 2010 with 50,000 words of my nemesis story, but I still, eleven years later, don’t have a plot. (the plot? I have lots of…things.)
NaNo hasn’t only given me the impetus to write and finish a bunch of novels (Is four a bunch?) It has given me friends. I met my dear friend, my roomie, through NaNo. I met a bunch of other writing friends, with whom I still write, on the NaNo forums, or in my favorite writing forum that grew from the NaNo forums. And, of course, most important to my writing destiny, I met Siri, Erin, and Kit through that forum.
We’ve been writing and publishing together for eleven years now. (Wow.)
NaNo has always had its share of detractors. They say it encourages people to write garbage. They say it gives people false ideas about the publishing industry. 50,000 words isn’t even a novel! They say we’re having too much fun.
They are, of course, entitled to their WRONG opinions. Some great books have grown out of NaNo. Clearly someone understands both NaNo and publishing. 50,000 words is easily a first draft of a novel! And as for the fun thing…
As you may have guessed from my choosing the subject, I’m doing NaNo this year. Despite all I said above, I’m a bit…trepidatious. I’ve had some pretty impressive crash-and-burns over my last few tries. There comes a point, you see, when a writer looks around and thinks some variation on “oh my lork, I have so many unfinished novels, I have no business writing something else. I need to finish these!”
This is so common, it became the famous Zokutou Clause.
When I have listened to that voice in the past, invoked the clause, it has Not Gone Well. As the (hopefully) immortal Chris Baty explained in the original rules of NaNo, it’s hard to take a story you’ve already poured a lot into, and just write with wild abandon. NaNo isn’t about writing the very best you can, it’s meant for gleeful writing as fast as your fingers will type, and also throwing in random ninjas when the plot slows down. So just like Chris said, it’s hard to take something you already care a lot about and throw ninjas in that you know you’ll just have to take out later. (Ask me sometime about the dares I threw into Burning Bright that became an integral part of the plot because they were there from the beginning. )
That said, I am doing it again. I am finishing my Srivasi serial (here’s part one!) first, because I know backwards and forwards what needs to happen, just because I’ve procrastinated SO LONG on writing it. And then I’m going to finish (hopefully!) Flame II, because it is usually easy to pick up a Flame story. I’ve always written Flame for the fun factor (she’s an utter joy to write, let me tell you. Flinging her off sail barges and dropping her into [redacted]…whee!)
And if I get that done? I’ll have another go at Nemesis. As mentioned, I’ve already NaNoed with her once, and got 50k, but never found my story, so I may have to do it again. There’s an amazing story in there somewhere, I know there is.
So that’s my month of November. Oh, and there’s a holiday or two in there. More time to write! Which I need, because it’s the third day and I’m already behind. Oops.
Happy NaNoWriMo, friends, whether you write or not. May it be joyous.