As you may have noticed, it’s now November, the time of year many writers have traditionally referred to as National Novel Writing Month. NaNoWriMo is an annual challenge in which eager scribblers attempt to write a first draft of a novel (defined as fifty thousand words) in one month, and meet up in coffee shops to discuss their progress (or lack thereof).
Or rather, they used to. This year, things are different.
I’ve done the NaNo challenge at various levels of commitment quite a few times, starting over a decade ago. My first time — in 2011 — I was successful in hitting the 50k, and I found the experience invaluable for both allowing me to get over my inner editor and introducing me to a wider writing community. When I moved across the country in October 2019, joining the local NaNo writing group was one of the first things I did after registering at the nearest dentist, and it was my first foray into the social life of my new city.
In the five years since then, my relationship with NaNoWriMo has been a bit of a roller coaster. In 2020 it was an absolute life-saver — or at least, a sanity saver. In 2021, with a newborn baby, I did a reduced challenge and enjoyed myself. In 2022, I tried to do a full challenge again and burned myself out horribly, so I took it easy again last year.
In the meantime, the NaNo non-profit itself has come under fire for repeated scandals for stuff ranging from inappropriate moderator behaviour on the forums to promoting the use of generative AI. As of the time of writing, many high-profile authors have publicly lambasted the organisation and severed their links. My own local group has disaffiliated, although we’re still having our meetups.
Because you don’t actually need an organisation and a website and dodgy sponsorships and all that jazz to have a group writing challenge. You just need a laptop (or even a notebook, if you want to go old school) and a coffee shop. So you can just say NO to NaNo, but say YES to success! (Actual results may vary).
The rise and fall of NaNoWriMo illustrates that organisations — especially ones run almost entirely by volunteers — can easily grow too big for their own infrastructure and end up mired in problems of their own making. To be honest, one thing I’m happy about is that this mess provides a good opportunity to rethink the whole concept of a writing challenge. While my first NaNo was a great learning experience that really helped me get my first novel over the line, over the years I’ve become increasingly dissatisfied with the whole concept.
The November writing challenge is all about vomiting out the words every day to hit an arbitrary target, never mind the quality. But, let’s be honest, 50k words, especially if it’s a load of incoherent garbage, isn’t actually a novel. 90k over three months or 100k over four months would be more realistic challenges to produce a first draft quickly. Even then, I’d have questions about how good the results would be. It’s difficult, because word count is how you can measure progress, but I think it’s more important to find the way of writing a book that works for you and produces a result that makes you happy.
Bashing out a very rough first draft as quickly as possible works as a writing strategy for many people, but it doesn’t work for everyone. The times I’ve successfully completed the full NaNo challenge, I’ve found my manuscript turned out extremely bad, requiring such enormous rewrites to be remotely usable I’ve felt I may as well have started again from scratch. The ‘just keep writing’ ethos isn’t helpful if you’ve fallen into a plot hole or lost your sense of your character motivations or you’ve totally burned out because you’re trying to write fifty thousand words while also dealing with sleep deprivation and a screaming baby.
NaNoWriMo has been fun, but it’s a one-size challenge that doesn’t fit everyone. There have been other challenges like the Camp NaNo summer version that allow you to set your own word target, but the main November challenge has always been set at 50k words, and it’s this challenge that has always attracted the critical mass of people required to make it a communal experience. Now, the organisation has all-but disbanded, and the writers have scattered to the winds.
So what’s next for writing challenges? Well, I’m definitely going to stay with my local ex-NaNo writing group, however we end up evolving. For myself, I’m determined to do three things: enjoy writing, look after myself, and use word targets as motivating tools rather than something to berate myself for not hitting. Last month, I did a little challenge I dubbed Choctober, where I rewarded myself with some chocolate every time I wrote a thousand words. And just this morning I hit fifty thousand words on my current work-in-progress, having started back in November 2022. So I’ve reached my 50k in November — I never specified November of what year. And now, after eating some more chocolate, I’m going to relax a bit, sort out my Christmas shopping, write another short story or two, maybe finish that fanfic… and come back to the main WiP when I feel ready. And hopefully, by next November, I’ll have another fifty thousand words.
