Ah yes, November. The month where everything gets darker for longer. The month where we now have something called Movember and people wear fake mustaches in their various social media profile pictures, seemingly just to annoy me. I even heard something, maybe two somethings, or something, about an election, or something.
It's also National Novel Writing Month! Or NaNo as the lazy like to call it. And I am for sure one of the lazy.
But I am not too lazy to commit to writing 50,000 words in November. It's 6 days in and I'm a little over 17,000. Not bad. Not bad at all. Of course I'm quickly running out of material so let's talk again when I hit the halfway mark and start sobbing over my Mac keyboard with a Red Vine hanging out of my mouth (I'd Instagram that shit but my husband still won't let me get a iPhone).
So for the unitiated, NaNo is an actual Thing, with a nonprofit educational foundation and a young writer's program and a giant website with forums and a place to track your progress and everything. It's pretty cool. And last year I made a bunch of awesome new friends in the Chick Lit forum, and we have our own little Facebook group and help each other with our writing year round. And sometimes some of the other forum areas have been helpful in the past as well.
But.
But.
This year? I think maybe I've completely outgrown this sort of internet-based interaction. And I came to this conclusion this afternoon:
I think maybe most of these people are just posting in the forums to get attention, and aren't really wanting help or wanting to have discussions.
I know!
I know, it's totally crazy.
And yet, there's the woman trolling the Chick Lit forums who keeps saying insulting things about Chick Lit nearly every day, trying to get us to rebut, but she has yet to write a single word. (I know what you're going to say, NaNo Cheerleaders: Maybe she just doesn't know how to update her Word Count. Sure. Maybe that's true. And maybe I'm going to write a fucking sci fi novel next year. Maybe that's true too.)
And then there's the girl who posted a thread asking for help coming up with a career for her main character. And everything everyone's posted in response, she's argued with. And in one case even said, "Politics is scary." Which -- yes. Politics are scary. But not for the reasons you think they are scary.
And then there are the people who kind of want you to just, you know, write their novel for them. "What should my characters say in this situation?" "What should happen next?" "Does anyone have any ideas about what I should write?"
(Answers: What did you say when that happened to you in real life?; Someone should die next. Someone should always die.; and Words. You should write words.)
And then there are the people who want advice on how to be funny when they write. Um, sweetie, you're either funny or you aren't. No one can help you now.
Oh, yes, and there are the first time writers who want someone to read their stuff. I promise: I would rather get a root canal than read the tripe of a person who has never written before. Please just spew your word vomit, crow about your word count, and chalk the whole thing up as practice for next time.
God. It is so damn hard to be so fucking perfect.
But yes. I think I might be done with this whole "visting the NaNo forums" thing. I think I might just, you know --- write my novel.
I'll let you know how this works out for me.
No comments:
Post a Comment