A NaNoWriMo Nightmare Turned Reality:
Do word count goals expose us for what we are? Bad writers?
Congratulations! We are almost halfway through National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo). If you are participating and need an encouraging pick-me-up, or a quick boost to push you toward meeting your daily word count goal, maybe stop reading now. If you are like me and indulge in a healthy dose of brooding from time to time, read on.
Late last night, as I updated my word count tracker to 26K, I felt relieved. On track. So light and happy. I thought,
“I’ll be dadgummit! I’m actually going to win NaNoWriMo!”
Then I did the one thing we must never do when we forbid ourselves to edit while drafting: I read through the day’s work.
Why was this a bad idea?
Before November, I never thought myself capable of producing such self-indulgent, grammatically incorrect, passive voiced, irreverent, and socially irrelevant drivel as was my NaNoWriMo draft input for yesterday. I cringe to think of it. Ugh. I cringe again. They don’t call it “word vomit” for nothing.
While I’ve spent the past two years researching, plotting, and world building for my historical novel, I’ve made little progress in writing the first draft. For me, NaNoWriMo 2017 was supposed to be a quantity-over-quality sort of exercise — a way to get to the essence of the story by committing ideas to the page.
If we view NaNoWriMo in this light, then we’ll all be just fine. All we have to do is write 1,667 words everyday in November to achieve a 50K-word draft by December 1st. When it comes to achieving daily word count goals, all words are fair game. This includes articles, pronouns, conjunctions, date and time values, etc.
Cool? Cool. But here is the deal. It hurts to see my novel, which has been slow cooking on low since January 2016, in its current state. I’ve turned up the heat, and now I’m burning my brisket. All my old rules have gone down the pooper so that I might meet my daily word count goals. I’m using adverbs again, a habit I worked many years to kick. I’ve been telling (er, generously pontificating) instead of showing. Cliches abound.
And that’s not all!
Prior to November 1st, I aspired for brevity. I tried to say more with less. These past fourteen days I’ve aspired to say less with more. I’ve stopped hyphenating, because my word count function counts hyphened multiples as one.
Finally — and really this is the straw that breaks the camel’s back — I’m about to publish a post where I’ve elected to use the word “pooper”.
What’s going on here?
Here is what’s going on: I see me.
And yikes. I’m writing the same way that I think. I’m reading my own voice in the raw, projecting my own assessments of life, nature, and humanity to the thoughts, words, and actions of fictional characters. And I’m shocked. I’m pretty sure 200 years ago people would not have said or done a lot of the things I’ve written into my NaNoWriMo draft.
Or would they have? While procrastinating on Facebook this morning, I scrolled past a post quoting William Faulkner. Here is what he had to say about human history:
“The past isn’t dead. It isn’t even past.”
I’m not certain if Faulkner meant for that to be reassuring or frightening, but even out of context it resonates.
My NaNoWriMo project is no longer the quantity-over-quality, “essence of my story” exercise I thought it would be. It’s more of a physical manifestation of a drawn out internal crisis coming to a head. But if there is no pain, then I guess there is no gain. Right?
I wonder what would happen if everyone was willing and able to participate in a time-limited novel writing binge like NaNoWriMo. Would it help us or hurt us? Would society improve or implode?
Unfortunately — or perhaps luckily — we’ll never know for sure.
Anyone is welcome to brood along with me in comments. Sharing our fears and misgivings kind of helps to keep the NaNoWriMo terror at bay. I’m already feeling better. ❤ Go ahead. Give it a try.
Krystal Mercer McLellan is a novelist from Brazoria County, Texas. She blogs to share research findings and lessons learned as she goes through the motions of drafting her first novel. Visit www.MercerMcLellan.com to subscribe for book updates and free writing tips. Thank you for reading.
If you feel like being NaNoWriMo buddies with Krystal Mercer McLellan, her profile link is: https://nanowrimo.org/participants/kmercermclellan
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