The glorification of “speed writing” baffles me.
I know several writers who can write very fast. An old colleague (a swooper by habit) could tap out 30,000 words in a weekend. One author of my acquaintance has ghost-written a book in ten days, and blogged about it while he was doing it.
In the Clarion writer workshops, you pretty much have to write a story a day during the two-week “boot camp” experience.
Then there’s NaNoWriMo, the National Novel Writing Month (aka November). If you’re a writer, you’ve heard about it. Perhaps you’ve even tried your hand at it. NaNoWriMo has chapters across the world, and has inspired a handful of imitators that encourage others by asking “Why wait until November? Write your novel this month!”
I never tried NaNoWriMo. I never plunked down the serious change required to attend Clarion. I have never even tried to write a story in a day, much less a novel in a fortnight.
I. Don’t. Write. Quickly.
And I’m not going to feel bad or inferior or somehow less because I don’t force myself to try.
What, after all, is the point of such speed? Is a novel written in a month better? In its decade-plus lifetime, NaNoWriMo has had over a million participants. Out of that million, there have been 62,000 novels written (about 6%). Out of that 62,000, the website reports about 165 titles that have been published (about 3/10ths of 1%).
So, not better.
I’m sure those who completed the novel-in-a-month challenge had a tremendous sense of accomplishment, but what of the 94% of writers who didn’t finish? How many of them were frustrated writers before they started, and were more frustrated afterward? How many, like me, are bashers for whom trying to write fast is counter-productive?
If you can write quickly, bully for you–it’s a gift some people have, and one which I do not possess–but if there’s one thing you can say about writing, it’s that it is not a one-size-fits-all endeavor.
I’ve known I was a slow creative writer from the start. Once in my life have I written a story in a day–it was a short-short, it appeared fully formed in my mind, and I wrote it down before I lost it. It was a one-off moment, and trying to force it to happen again is a waste of time.
For me, writing is a slow, thoughtful process. It is not to be rushed. It takes discipline and dedication, surely, but writing a novel in nine months is a breakneck pace for me. This may limit me in my writing career, but frankly I’d rather do it well than do it fast.
If you’re a slow writer, too, don’t succumb to the pressure to speed up. You are not less talented because you cannot write fast. Just look at all the books on your shelf and know that very few–if any–were written in a month.
Fast doesn’t mean quality. Fast doesn’t mean better. Fast doesn’t even mean good. It just means fast.
Write your page a day, finish your novel in a year, and you’ve still done something most people in the world will never be able to do.
Unraveling Time
Desert Wind
Ploughman's Son
Ploughman King
The Year the Cloud Fell
The Spirit of Thunder
Shadow of the Storm
The Cry of the Wind
Beneath a Wounded Sky
Cryptogenesis: A Memoir
Kurt R.A. Giambastiani 
I love NaNoWriMo! I haven’t ever finished, and what I’ve written is far from my best. It’s entirely possible that I could have used my time much more wisely and written something much better if I hadn’t been distracted.
But there are three awesome things about NaNoWriMo.
1. It gives me a break from long-term projects. When I come back to them in December, I am forced to slow down and take some time to get back on the path. Some of my best writing has come from those first few weeks after. I can come back with a fresh mind, and difficult plot problems don’t seem so hard.
2. I can try something different. I have several ongoing projects that I usually focus on, and they take up all of my very limited writing time. I don’t have enough time to try something crazy, but for NaNoWriMo, I know that it’s a finite period, and I can throw all of my normal rules out the window.
3. It’s just fun, comparing word counts, trying to top my numbers for yesterday or last week or last year. A lot of my writing is product descriptions and sales copy, and that isn’t fun. It’s really nice to be able to just relax and have some fun with it.
It certainly isn’t for everyone, but it can be a lot of fun. It doesn’t have the pressure that my usual work does, because I don’t have the same expectations.
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I certainly didn’t mean to say that NaNoWriMo is without merit. I especially like your observation that there’s a carry-over effect from the process, and it’s good to hear that you get something positive from it even though you don’t complete the project.
For me, finding a balance between day-job, writing, and having a life is difficult enough without my basically throwing that third item out the window for a month!
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Oddly, I read a post today by a chap who apparently writes 6 novels a year. That kind of output always makes me question the quality of the work. Sure, it can be done (I couldn’t do it, I’m a snail) but I agree with you that it simply isn’t desirable for everyone. It also depends partly on genre, I would say. I’m sure if I turned my hand to a series of thrill-a-minute, formulaic serial-killer-chillers I could bash several out in far less time than the 4-odd years its’ taken my first novel to gestate. That would undeniably be fun and rewarding in its own way. But then I’d be writing something very different. It takes all sorts.
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It’s definitely possible. There’s one author friends of mine know who’s a colonel in the Air Force (US), father of four, and author of 1 to 2 novels a year. And he says writing is his third priority. For him, it’s possible.
I just don’t like to see potential authors frustrated by their inability to do the same.
When I started writing novels, my model was Joseph Conrad. He wrote _Lord Jim_ in 18 months, which seemed a reasonable amount of time to me, just to think about, evaluate, and physically write that many words. I eventually got down to about 10 months of actual writing time, with 2-3 months of preparatory work before and a couple/three weeks editing afterward.
I want to encourage “snails” like you and me to dump that novel-in-a-month glamer and look at something that better fits our writing habits.
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The point of NaNoWriMo is to just get it finished. I know, personally, I have a hard time getting the words down because I’m too afraid to write something bad. NaNo forces you to write terrible stuff, to get out that not-even-a-first-draft of your novel. The editing comes later for the devoted few who want their novels published.
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Yes, I understand that that is the point–to finish–but it isn’t the only way to approach the task. A page a day is another way to go about it, and much more manageable to many in terms of time available and writing habits.
And, if only 6% of participants can do it, is it of added value to the writing community at large? Does it help more than it hurts?
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Many of the greatest novels took a decade to complete. I sort of believe that if people need NaNoWriMo to get them writing as much as they can, they probably shouldn’t be pursuing publication. After all, if it only took you a month to write, why should I read it? Though, there is something nice about the celebration of the written word that NaNo inspires.
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It’s a reflection of our society’s values, I think, to do something quickly rather than to do it well. It may jump-start some writers, but I wonder if it does more damage than good?
And why _November_ for cryeye? I mean, it’s got Thanksgiving in it and everything…that’s most of a week lost anyway, if you visit family. Seems like a strike against you at the start.
Thanks for stopping by.
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