Regarding NaNoWriMo

In theory, I’m in favor of NaNo. A shared creative project is great and while obviously a very small percentage of the results will ever be published or even seen by the general public, that’s not a reason to deter somebody from writing.

However, the NaNo forums and community in general not only abide, but actively encourage absolutely appalling habits and techniques that butcher the spirit of writing in the first place. Threads such as “Dirty tricks to reaching 50k” are particular goldmines where people brainstorm ways to artificially stretch your word count such as by giving people long, superfluous names and titles, and by deliberately repeating lines of dialogue. I really could not encapsulate how toxic that thread in particular is so I just suggest going to read it.

In addition to that, the community is a hugbox of the highest order. People with genuine critiques who don’t put on the kid gloves for everybody are often banned.  Many people use the nano forums to do 100% of their research, asking asinine, broad questions such as “what was life like in Salem?” or “what might two friends argue about?” that show a total dearth of both creativity and prerogative.

The vast majority of nano participants have no business writing, as they are totally uninterested in the actual craft or in producing anything even vaguely readable. They simply want the bragging rights. Some of them even entertain notions of being published while spending more time talking about their book on the NaNo forums than just writing it.

You might argue that I’m damning the prospect of writing as a hobby rather than a legitimate pursuit; I’m not. You can play guitar without expecting to become a rockstar. But if you’re going to ask people to help you cheat at playing guitar, why even bother?

If you’re only writing for the ego rush and you think that crapping out 50,000 words of dreck somehow makes you a ‘novelist’, you need to stop.