NaNoWriMo: appending the process

It’s National Novel Writing Month once more! And once again, thousands of people will pledge to hunker down and grind out 50,000 words to come up with that novel that they’ve always told themselves they’ll churn out.

NaNoWriMo has a very “Nike-esque” premise: Just do it. What better way to write a novel than to write and write for an entire month, get to 50,000 words, and see what comes out? And then you can spend the next year polishing it up.

NaNoWriMo means well. Efficiency-wise, however, I think there’s a problem with the premise. Here’s why.

A novel is a very complex creature. Yes you can ramble every now and then, perhaps even go off-tangent at your indulgence, because the length of the format gives you license to do so.

In the end, however, a novel needs the length because of the sheer complexity of its premise. Multiple characters are likely, as are multiple threads that hopefully interweave in a meaningful manner.

Unfortunately, very few people have the genius to weave something masterful by simply thumping down the first things that pop to mind.

And sure you are encouraged to take a year to revise your work, but by then you may be stuck with problems that are so deeply embedded in the text that there is simply no way to fix them without starting from scratch.

Kind of like engineers deciding to construct a building by putting a bunch of blocks together and seeing what comes out of it. By the time they realize that they would need another elevator shaft to make the entire thing work, they would have no recourse but to tear everything down.

So here’s my suggestion: Instead of impulsively starting your Great Big Novel every time November rolls around (and then likely abandoning it after a few starts), why not append the NaNoWriMo process a bit?

Spend the months of January to October planning out your storyline. Create engaging characters. Create a killer premise with killer twists, if you’re doing fiction, or plot out a fascinating trajectory if you’re going non-fiction. At any rate, that’s a lot of time to put your plans and characters together.

And then November becomes your deadline to finally write it all out. Use NaNoWriMo as a motivator to keep you writing.

Your advantage over other NaNoWriMo’ers: it’s easier to write if you have well-crafted plans and storylines. And easier still if you spent nearly a year putting it all together.

Finish your 50,000 words, pat yourself on the back… and then spend the next year tweaking and polishing your manuscript.

This way, you’ve constructed your building with a clear blueprint, rather than constructing a hodgepodge of components that you eventually couldn’t keep track of.

(Besides, just between us girls, most people who join NaNoWriMo join it just to express to the world that they want to write a novel. Serious novelists, on the other hand, do lots and lots of preliminary work. That’s how JK Rowling did it. And that’s how you should do it too.)

My two cents. Now where’s my pen?