I Have NaNo Clue

Whenever I play any game in the Legend of Zelda series, I find myself getting a lot jumpier. Like, I’ll keep thinking I’m seeing things out of the corners of my eyes, or, when I go to bed at night, I can’t shake the feeling that something might be right beside me if I just opened my eyes to check. It’s only the Legend of Zelda that does this to me, and I can’t figure out why. Any ideas?

Anyways, much as I wish I could spin that into a full-length blog entry, I can’t. So let’s talk instead about… uh… NaNoWriMo! (I know that sounds like I actually planned to talk about NaNo this entire time and made up this lousy segue to link into the main body of this blog entry, but I really just pulled it out of nowhere. Seriously.)

Um, so, for those who don’t know, NaNoWriMo = National Novel Writing Month, which is a fancy term for what most people call “November”. Basically, the idea is that you write a 50,000-word novel between Nov.1 and Nov. 30. This means you have to write an average of 1, 666 2/3 words a day. (Well, if you have a strange philosophy of language, you can try for precisely 1, 666 and 2/3 words each day. I’d be interested in seeing your work.)

Because you’re writing so much, so quickly, the idea is you can shut up your inner censor. The words don’t have to be good; they just have to be words. You can come back and re-write them to your heart’s content as soon as you hit that magic 50,000-mark. You can also track your progress on a little NaNo meter that everyone else can see, which presumably is there to encourage you to actually hit your word goals and not get bored and play Legend of Zelda instead (pssssh, who’d do something like that?).

I actually don’t know how I feel about NaNo. I know it’s easy for people to deride it – you know, the whole, “you’re not a real writer no matter how many self-indulgent words you manage to put on paper in time to fill up your meter”; I know it’s also easy for people to extol it – “there’s no such thing as a real writer! You’re a winner just for finishing!”. Both these extremes rub me the wrong way. You over there, get lost and take your “real writer = commercial success” definitions with you! You over here, scram and don’t let me see your self-esteem-over-results attitude again!

I think it’s obvious why the first objection doesn’t suit me: like so many have pointed out, you can be a musician or a painter without having the ultimate goal of doing it professionally – why shouldn’t you be a writer even if you don’t intend to be/aren’t published? And, if you do want to be published, why should deciding to write your first draft as part of a program full of supportive fellow writers matter? (Answer: it shouldn’t.)

However, at the same time, the minute someone introduces me to someone and says they’re some sort of artist and not professionally, I tend to dread the moment when they spring whatever talent they have on me. I mean, the thing about anyone who can pick up an instrument being called a musician is, it means there are a whole lot of REALLY BAD musicians.

Which brings me to the reason I’m not really into the second point. You can be a writer and still be a REALLY BAD writer. Lord knows I think this applies to some published writers I’ve read. So, to me, winning NaNoWriMo is exactly that , and only that, which is nothing to scoff at – you have put 50, 000 words down on paper. You have stamina and dedication, and most would-be writers don’t get as far as you. You are a WRITER because you are SOMEONE WHO WRITES (instead of Someone Who Talks About Writing or Someone Who Blogs About NaNo). And, if that’s what you want, that’s great. But, if you want to be a decent or good (or great – why not aim for the top?) writer, you probably aren’t done yet.

(I should point out here that this has nothing to do with the people I know who are doing NaNoWriMo – they span the spectrum from totally inexperienced but extremely dedicated to working writers for whom my level of respect reaches its peak. Sure, I expect some of them to produce silly stuff, at least on the first draft. Who doesn’t have first drafts like that? But I also expect some polished works of genius to come out of the whole affair, too. So, nyah.)

Maybe my knee-jerk discomfort with NaNo comes from the fact that I really don’t like the concept of being rewarded for “trying”. No, maybe “trying” is the wrong word here. I don’t mean that every writer who does NaNo goes at it with the goal of being published or even with the goal of producing something good (whatever that means). So, for some people, finishing NaNo isn’t trying – it’s succeeding. I guess what I’m talking about is the idea of publicly rewarding people for private accomplishments that most people don’t consider praiseworthy. It certainly works for some people, and I’m not knocking it for them, but, to me, it feels patronizing. “Don’t worry, I know you’d never realize what an achievement this is on your own, so I’ve brought some other people here to tell you it’s good.”

I mean, sure, I enjoy managing my small business, but I really don’t want a whole organization to tell me that, hey, so few people actually do that, you know, and so what if you’re not wildly commercially successful? Commercial success is its own reward because it provides money and/or fame. But starting a small business is its own reward because *I* can appreciate the work that went into it, not because somebody else wants to redefine it as a Good Thing – in fact, for me, that kind of takes away from the whole reason I wanted to do it in the first place.

I recently read an old article on Harry Potter and sportsmanship, where the writer pointed out that the whole reason sportsmanship is so admirable is that you don’t get rewarded for it – that’s what makes it sportsmanship and not playing the game well. Likewise, I think that what makes some effort (or goodness, but that’s a whole other blog entry) admirable is that it’s not usually considered an end in itself.

Don’t get me wrong – I think it’s way more writerly to, you know, write something than it is not to write. But I think the admirable-ness of writing something and the admirable-ness of publishing something are two very different things that can’t usually be compared to each other, and trying to turn one into the other is distorting both. Can’t we talk about writing and publishing as two related, but different things? I mean, it’s not like there’s a linear scale of “true writerhood” where you get 10 experience points for writing an MS and 20 for being published. Being a writer isn’t a “skill” like in a video game where everyone’s ability can be measured by a single number and compared on that basis.

Hmmm… I guess the reason why I never participate in NaNo (and really don’t intend to in the future) is because I already spend part of each day writing. I rarely make 1,667 words, but I’m always working on something. Besides, should I suddenly decide I need crappy manuscripts to revise (my first drafts are always utter balls), I’ve already got six or seven. I don’t really need one more. Which is cool – everyone’s writing style is different. What doesn’t work for me (NaNo) might work for you, and more power to you in that case.

So what I’m saying, as I scramble wildly for some way to tie this back into the Zelda observation at the beginning of this blog entry, is that there are a lot of reasons that NaNo isn’t for me. Some of them may be bad ones (like, hey, doesn’t every writer want to feel that Writing is something Speshul that only he/she can do right as opposed to something you do in groups with lots of other people who are probably just as good at it as you are, if not better), but others aren’t. To everyone I know who’s doing NaNo: go, go, go! You can do it! To everyone I know who isn’t: uh… well, that’s a valid choice, too.

And to everyone I know who’s playing a Zelda game: don’t you think you should be able to choose whether Link is a guy or a girl (and whether Zelda is a guy or a girl), depending on your own gender/preference? I totally do. If they can make him change into a wolf or a Deku scrub or a kid and back, how come they can’t make him female? ‘Cause I’m really not into the whole every-character-who-isn’t-me is an ugly man or a ridiculously nubile female who wants to marry me.