If you are of the writerly-folk… You should know that NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) has officially begun. Yes, beware of coffee drinking zombies across the nation staying up till all hours of the morning getting their word counts in. At Starbucks today I saw at least four writerly-folks tackling their first 2,000 or so words during their lunch hour. Seriously folks, you don’t need wifi to write… but that is another post 
So yes, NaNoWriMo has begun! Let the trumpets sound… oops that sounded like a whoopty-doo instead. Yeah, yeah, yeah… I may get flogged for this post, but this is how I feel this year. Sue me.
NaNoWriMo is an awesome concept for those writerly-folks who have issues seeing their novels through to completion. You get a schnazzy button to say you did it and the congratulatory pat on the back from others who are NaNo’ing.
Don’t get me wrong, writing a novel in a month is a huge undertaking and when you do it, you TOTALLY deserve the pat on the back and a button! I mean HELLO, you just wrote a novel!! That is amazing! Go celebrate!
However (Yup, you knew there’d be a but in here…), can I ask for the sake of all the agents in the great nation of writer-ville that you wait to query your NaNoWriMo Novel until AFTER you’ve had at least 10 beta readers… have read through it again 40 or so times and edited at least that many more? Why? Because no one’s novel is ready to be queried the month after you wrote it.
Sorry. Did I burst your bubble?
I hope not. In fact, I hope you are excited about NaNoWriMo but even more excited about sending your novel out on a Beta Read (or ten) and then revisions starting soon thereafter! Because that is where your life will be for the next year until the next NaNo… Maybe more!
It takes a lot to write a novel… a lot! But it also takes a lot more to revise, reread, edit, revise, and repeat! It’s all about the finished product. It’s all about getting your MS to the best possible place before you throw it out there. You only have one shot at the agent you are sending to… make sure it’s a perfect delivery. Because unfortunately, a lot of these agents do not want to see it again, even if you have revised it till its perfect.
So while I love the thought of NaNoWriMo… I just wish I could put a lock on all the new MSs being written and tell them to wait to query until you have done the revision/editing work. I know it’s hard to believe that you/we can’t write a perfect MS the first time… but we can’t.
Even Stephen King can’t. His daily goal is 1,000 PERFECT words a day. That isn’t very much considering this is his full time job. But he writes those 1,000 and then reads and revises as many times as necessary until he has a wonderful final product. Imagine spending 10 hours on 1,000 words… Hard to believe? Why do you think he sells so many books?
Food for thought…
No related posts.
Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.
6 Responses
Great post. No flogging I promise. It’s crazy that people submit the novel immediately in december, or do minor edit then publish themselves and think they will have awesome sales (yes, I know one who did this).
The novel I plan to submit was kind of a nano novel. I say kind of cause I only got 14,000 words done that month. But umm, that was for nanowrimo 2007.
I love using the month to see other people writing and to get down my first draft because some awesome writing can be accomplished in one month. *points to march 2010 and the 67k that makes up a decent mutant novel that will soon be rewritten* It’s a start (not the final destination) and I like that.
So, no flogging from me.
Yay! No Flogging from Dawn!!!
I completely agree! I hate how newbie authors do NaNo, write a novel, poop out a query letter, and immediately send it out to agents. It’s STUPID. I fully intend to finish this damn book, and revise it for several months, sit on it for several more, and then send it to betas until it’s as shiny as possible!
Well yeah, of course revising, sending to beta readers etc. are Good Things, but the fact that many NaNoers are clueless and think they can query a first draft doesn’t mean that NaNo is a Bad Thing. And I don’t feel sorry for the agents. It’s their job to sift the nuggets of gold out from the piles of manure. If they don’t like it, they can do a Nathan Bransford and go corporate.
As writers I don’t think we should be worrying about what other writers are doing. Even the really bad ones. Especially the really bad ones. We should just be refining and polishing our own skills into pure gold that shows up really well against the manure.
I wrote about the issue on my blog so I won’t repeat myself any further. Happy writing to all of you, whether you NaNo or not.
Ah, your blog does not like html tags in comments. My post about NaNo is at http://keepgoingyoufool.blogspot.com/2010/11/brontes-wrote-crap.html for anyone who’s interested.
I actually cheat, and I edit as I go. I don’t do that “SPLAT! Have to get the words down, any words, oh God where are the woooooooooords?” thing. No no no. I write my allotted amount and then go back and polish them. I put this down to a combination of no social life and a typing speed of almost 100wpm.
Nano Rebel!!