This is the part I don't understand: - If you don't want to sell it, you don't want anyone to read it. - If you don't want anyone to read it, why do you need someone to tell you how to write it? The idea that people need an excuse to "take an interest" in writing is a bad one. I suppose on some level somewhere it's "empowering" to discover that you can blather for a month straight and end up with something you don't want anyone else to read but I mean, fuck - Jack Nicholson did that in The Shining. Writing is about storytelling. It's about conveying information from my head to yours. Stephen King calls it straight up telepathy and if you aren't trying to reach out to someone else, you're just "thinking." It is a fuckin' tragedy that you wrote a book that you can't stand to read. But it is fuckin' archetypal that it's what NinnnyNinnyNooNoo is about. You wanna talk about the death of reading, here it is: encourage people to type drivel for one month a year so they can be "novelists." That's why the writing magazines are all about low-residency MFAs and why literary agents are worshipped as gods walking the earth: we've created a culture where it isn't about what you write, it's about the fact that you closed Facebook long enough to puke-draft 50,000 words between Halloween and Thanksgiving. Guaranteed: there were writer's groups that you missed out on because you were hanging out with the NaNoNinnies. They would have made better friends, they would have been more committed to success, and they wouldn't have let you put out a book that you didn't want to read. I've written nine screenplays. I've optioned two. Eight of them are fan-fucking-tastic. I'll show 'em to anybody. And that comes from a commitment to storytelling instead of typing.
I'm not sure why you're so angry about NaNo, but... I agree with everything you say about NaNo, I just don't come to the same end result. I know what writing is, and I know what storytelling is. I read On Writing too, so I'm aware of the telepathy quote. Being annoyed that I didn't edit enough isn't the same as not wanting to tell the story. I've told that story all over the place, as much as I can, because I love it. I gave it to the person who's judgement I hold above all others (with the exception of mine), and that's all I need. Wishing I'd edited more doesn't mean I don't like the story I told. I didn't write that book during NaNoWriMo because... If I'm writing about something I care about, I don't need a bunch of shitheads in a cafe to tell me to write x number of words a day. If I love what I'm writing, I bleed it out of my pen until I have no ink left, and I buy ink by the barrel (<- see that? that's why I need to vacuum out). I've never written anything that I'm ashamed of, which is why if you troll around my website's subdomains you'll see pretty much everything I've ever written (samples of bigger projects I do want to sell). if I'm ashamed of an idea, it doesn't leave my head. I use NaNo as a vacuum. All of the bad ideas and cliches that do get in my head, I pump them out during NaNo so I've got a more focused toolset when it comes to writing the stories that I love. My goal at NaNo is never to have something at the end to publish or be egotistical about, but to cycle out so all of my other writing benefits. If you don't approve of that or if you don't like it, that's fine. It's just what I do.
Because it's everything that's wrong with the amateur literature industry. Because I've had to read some of that shit and it's execrable. Because people who can't work on something for more than a month shouldn't work on it for a month. Because it discourages discipline and denigrates hard work. And when none of the above are true, you play NaNoWriMo.I'm not sure why you're so angry about NaNo,
If I'm writing about something I care about, I don't need a bunch of shitheads in a cafe to tell me to write x number of words a day. If I love what I'm writing, I bleed it out of my pen until I have no ink left, and I buy ink by the barrel.
I use NaNo as a vacuum. All of the bad ideas and cliches that do get in my head, I pump them out during NaNo so I've got a more focused toolset when it comes to writing the stories that I love. My goal at NaNo is never to have something at the end to publish or be egotistical about, but to cycle out so all of my other writing benefits. If you don't approve of that or if you don't like it, that's fine. It's just what I do.
That's fine. But we started here: And I'm just not sure why you'd waste the effort on something that you hate.I did some world building and outlining for my NaNoWriMo project - something incredibly generic that'll probably never be finished because I never finish NaNo projects.
No, I've heard you all the way. You aren't hearing me when I say that your "tool" is harmful to your writing and your well-being. And go ahead and mute me - but understand if I didn't give a shit about you and your writing, I wouldn't give a shit about this.