Write 50,000 words of your novel in one month to win = Crazy?

Tomorrow is November first, the start of National Novel Writing Month, or #NaNoWriMo. If you can write 50,000 words of your own work within that one month, then you win discounts on cool writing software and new chances to "get discovered." You don't win money, sadly. The prizes are listed at this link. But it's a great way to create a writing discipline. The question is: Does all this work in one month justify the effort?

I can tell you all from my own experience that it took me about NINE MONTHS to write my first novel of 70,000 words. You could compare it to giving birth, mentally and emotionally speaking. So yeah, my first reaction to hearing about this writing marathon was, "Why would anybody want to do this to themselves -- and not even for money?"

Even my cat wouldn't agree to this.

giphy.com

I researched all the reasons why #NaNoWriMo is a bad idea:

1. You have to write so much so fast that you will produce a bunch of crap just to reach the goal in time.

2. It turns out that most literary agents consider 50,000 words as a kids' size book. It's not enough material to even call it a book, and you'll probably delete lots of it because of ... see reason 1.

3. Many agents don't even read book submissions sent in December because they know NaNoWriMo just ended, and a bunch of people who think they don't need to edit their "incredible" novel have just sent them a pile of half-baked trash to sort through. Agents hate NaNoWriMo submissions like these. Read more about that here.

4. Winning NaNoWriMo just means that you reached the word-count goal, which is great but ... thousands do it. So how special is that? Not really resume material. In 2016, they had 384,126 participants and there were 34,000 winners.

However ... every cloud has a silver lining.

#NaNoWriMo also has some great advantages if you have a different approach to it:

1. Social-media channels like Twitter are full of NaNoWriMo writers, ready to cheer each other on. That means you can make friends with other motivated writers, maybe swap ideas and help each other grow as writers. It's a big event that brings a lot of writers together, and not all of them are newbies.

2. Lili St. Crow said, “Discipline allows magic. To be a writer is to be the very best of assassins. You do not sit down and write every day to force the Muse to show up. You get into the habit of writing every day so that when she shows up, you have the maximum chance of catching her, bashing her on the head, and squeezing every last drop out of that bitch.” Having written for a living for the last six years, I completely agree. NaNoWriMo pushes you to do just that kind of dedicated writing.

3. The process forces you to speed up your creative thinking so that it flows easier, which gives you more interesting ideas. I can see the potential for "stream of consciousness" writing in building more original work.

4. Professional writers making big bucks in fiction, like Sara Gruen of "Water for Elephants," use events like NaNoWriMo as a booster rocket to crank out a new idea. Then they spend the next year or more revising it to make it into that final novel worth reading. Nobody is publisher-ready at the end of November. It's about the process.

For me, it came down to recognizing that I've worked alone for too long, and I need more feedback on my work to take it to the next level. I'm finally not too shy to face the criticisms anymore because I need them to grow.

When I woke up this morning to nine more followers ready to support me within 12 hours of announcing I was ready to NaNoWriMo on Twitter, I knew it:

I'm ready for this!

Now I'll be happily typing my way into writer's camaraderie to develop my writing skills like good old Kermit:

giphy.com