Escaping the Chains of NaNoWriMo
If you want to write a novel, do you really need to wait until November 1 to impose the artificial discipline of a “writing month” upon yourself?
When we began sheltering in place, back in early March, I still held out some hope that the United States would buckle down and get through this the same way most everybody else seemed prepared to do—several weeks of intense hardship, to be sure, but after that we’d return to something like equilibrium.
It never occurred to me that “American exceptionalism” was so thoroughly grounded in stubborn ignorance that we would be approaching Labor Day barely any better off than we were on St. Patrick’s Day. I imagined that the end of 2020 would feel somewhat subdued; no matter how the elections turn out at the beginning of November, I knew we’d have as much to grieve as we did to be thankful for at the end of the month, and we’d spend Christmas and New Year’s thinking about all those who were no longer with us.
My thoughts of the future, however, didn’t include much more detail than that. I certainly hadn’t anticipated, for example, how National Novel Writing Month might unfold in the middle of quarantine conditions.
Jordan Calhoun of Lifehacker has begun to consider the possibilities, upon learning that the “official” infrastructure of NaNoWriMo is moving entirely online.
I don’t participate in any “official” NaNoWriMo proceedings, but for the last two years, as other writers have spent November attempting to produce a 50,000-word manuscript in the space of thirty days, I’ve used this newsletter to offer encouragement and advice. I haven’t thought that far ahead this year, but I suspect I’ll do much the same when the time comes.
I found Calhoun’s advice about preparing oneself now for the project fairly sensible—but in ways that don’t have to intersect with National Novel Writing Month. Figure out what time of day you can get your most productive writing done, Calhoun suggests; find the best location in your environment to do it. If you’re still sheltering in place with children, start thinking about writing around your responsibilities to them.
All sensible advice—for any time of the year.
Over the last six months, I keep coming back to the recognition that this world offers less than ideal conditions for creative endeavors right now, and we should refuse to feel ashamed for failing to do something creative, or for falling short of our goals. We have enough to do simply trying to stabilize our immediate surroundings, and if we don’t have much time or energy after that to do any extracurricular work, we can always look ahead to the future.
People have bad writing days even under ideal conditions, I’ve said; who can blame us for not doing our best when things turn south?
I’ve also acknowledged that, let’s face it, if you are reading this newsletter, you probably possess a fair amount of privilege under the current dominant way of life, and that the discomfort and inconvenience we’ve been experiencing these last six months only approximates a day in the life for many less privileged people in the pre-pandemic world. (In pandemic world, of course, they have it even harder.)
And yet some people, despite all the hardship in their lives, still manage to come up with brilliant creative work. It may not ever reach much of an audience, necessarily, but that doesn’t make it any less brilliant.
I’ve talked a lot, over the course of this newsletter, about using a writing practice to find out what matters most to you, the themes and principles you want to build a life around. What more opportune time to do that, I suppose, than when life comes at you as starkly as it has in 2020? You might even consider this a moment of clarity, a time when you might never see what you want to do with your one wild and precious life more clearly.
What will you do with that knowledge? And when will you start doing it?
If you want to write a novel, do you really need to wait until November 1 to impose the artificial discipline of a “writing month” upon yourself?
By all means, if you haven’t done so already, start to experiment with finding the ideal writing conditions today. You don’t have to get it right the first time. You can spend days, weeks, months trying out different times, different spaces—you might not ever hit upon the perfect routine; you might have to adjust that routine constantly over the course of your life. Right now, making the effort matters more than the results.
The results will come… if you stay with the practice. If you integrate it into your life, rather than treat it as a special event.
PS: All of this applies if the thing you want to write isn’t a novel, of course.
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