{"id":261,"date":"2011-10-06T14:47:05","date_gmt":"2011-10-06T18:47:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/juliesondradecker.com\/?p=261"},"modified":"2014-02-27T00:41:19","modified_gmt":"2014-02-27T05:41:19","slug":"on-nanowrimo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/juliesondradecker.com\/?p=261","title":{"rendered":"On NaNoWriMo"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nanowrimo.org\/\">National Novel Writing Month<\/a> is coming.<\/p>\n<p>If you&#8217;re not familiar, it&#8217;s held every November, and it involves writers signing up on a website with a promise to write a novel between November 1 and November 30.\u00a0 They have thirty days to try to write 50,000 words, and a community has grown up around it\u2014a whole international society of writers who record and post their word counts, compete, and cheer each other on.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve never participated in NaNoWriMo.\u00a0 But let me tell you about my perspectives on it: why it&#8217;s wonderful, and why I nevertheless don&#8217;t participate.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Why NaNoWriMo is GREAT:<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong><\/strong>Many writers struggle with motivation to write.\u00a0 Being forced to make the time or else admit &#8220;losing&#8221; NaNoWriMo helps some.<\/li>\n<li>Many writers do MUCH better if they have an audience of people expecting and hoping that they will succeed.\u00a0 Since writing is by nature a solitary occupation but not everyone is a solitary person, having a community poised to watch your word count grow is rewarding.<\/li>\n<li>No one expects a novel composed in thirty days to be Shakespeare.\u00a0 Therefore, the pressure is off for those writers who constantly self-edit during the writing process.<\/li>\n<li>The community provides access to so many other writers; novelists can find critique partners, like-minded folks, and friends.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Why I&#8217;ve never done it (and will never do it):<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong><\/strong>November is an unusually busy month for me most years.<\/li>\n<li>I already write fast.\u00a0 Writing a novel in 30 days isn&#8217;t a challenge for me because of my bat-out-of-Hell writing style.<\/li>\n<li>I don&#8217;t play well with others when it comes to creativity.<\/li>\n<li>I don&#8217;t tend to need encouragement.\u00a0 I&#8217;ve got that pretty well licked; I never stop writing.<\/li>\n<li>The last thing I need is another hastily written manuscript lying around for me to edit.<\/li>\n<li>I tend to get easily roped into editing for less experienced writers if I think they need me.\u00a0 Failing to put myself in a situation where I would definitely encounter them is an act of self-preservation.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>If you&#8217;ve always wanted to write a novel but you couldn&#8217;t get off the ground, or you&#8217;ve started project after project but fizzled out, or you need a reason to dive in . . . do NaNoWriMo.\u00a0 I have a ton of friends who find it really rewarding.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>National Novel Writing Month is coming. If you&#8217;re not familiar, it&#8217;s held every November, and it involves writers signing up on a website with a promise to write a novel between November 1 and November 30.\u00a0 They have thirty days to try to write 50,000 words, and a community has grown up around it\u2014a whole [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36,30],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-261","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog","category-on-writing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/juliesondradecker.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/261","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/juliesondradecker.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/juliesondradecker.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/juliesondradecker.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/juliesondradecker.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=261"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/juliesondradecker.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/261\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":968,"href":"https:\/\/juliesondradecker.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/261\/revisions\/968"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/juliesondradecker.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=261"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/juliesondradecker.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=261"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/juliesondradecker.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=261"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}