A Nano Defense

Well, last week I finished up Nanowrimo 2013 with 60,000 words of a book I’m calling TALON Force. It’s a middle grade urban fantasy with kind of a Warehouse 13 flare. Except instead of magical artifacts, Nate and his team manage magical creatures. This year, through Delve Writing, I was in contact with a lot of writers who were new to Nanowrimo. I found myself explaining Nano and its purpose in a writing world, which made me look at the process in a new way.

There was still the argument that Nano is a way to help you get words on the page, especially if you’re a perfectionist or you struggle with commitment. But then there are the people who argue back saying, what’s the point, if everything you’re writing down is crap?

I have a rebuttal — but wait, Ernest Hemingway said it best: “The first draft of anything is shit.” Anyone who tells you otherwise has never written more than the first draft. So doing Nano just gets the crap out faster so you can get to the making it better part sooner. If you want to be a real writer, you’re going to have to suck it up and do that anyway. Don’t believe me? Ask E. B. White. “The best writing is rewriting.”

But that can be discouraging, too, to be told to have low expectations. I’ve always said Nano is about quantity over quality. Except this year, I started realizing it’s closer to finding quality in quantity. The more you write the better the writing will be. You’ll find genius ideas buried in the excrement, beautiful turns of phrase will pop up in unexpected corners of sludge. And it’s funny, but the more you look at the crap, the more you realize it’s actually a pretty solid foundation that just needs to be swept and mopped.

It is nothing less than amazing to write a novel. Even if you have to spend months or even years (guilty here) making it worth other people's time. Never underestimate that experience.