GET BACK in the GAME: NaNoWriMo STARTS TODAY

By Kasie Whitener 

It’s that time of year again! November is National Novel Writing Month or NaNoWriMo for those of us in the know, and all over the country writers of every stripe are preparing to dedicate 30 days to generating 50,000 words. 

Of mostly unusable garbage. 

In repeated conversations on our radio show, Write On SC, Rex Hurst and I have discussed the merits and risks of NaNoWriMo. Specifically, that it’s a great habit-building exercise. Every year when November rolls around, I look forward to getting back to the habit of writing every day. But NaNo is such a frenzy and the goal of getting to 50,000 words is so difficult, that a lot of what I write will probably not be any good. 

I’ve completed five NaNoWriMo projects, getting to the 50k mark with four of them, and so far, none have become viable. 

I did take my original project, a vampire novel called “Seduction of an Innocent” – yeah, I know, terrible title – and use it as base stock to cook up Being Blue. This novel should have been my first one. I queried it, approached agents with it, even considered self-publishing it. But it’s still not ready. That was 2012. 

Last year, I tried my hand at romance. Listeners of the show know I binge read romance novels, sometimes as many as five per week, and yet that’s the only NaNo project I failed to finish in November. When I did finally stretch the pitiful work I’d done to its conclusion and gave it to a few beta readers in April, I swiftly tucked the 60,000-words-of-wishful-thinking into the proverbial drawer. Where it shall remain. I heard crickets from the betas which should tell you something about the merits of that work. 

In any case, I plan to try my hand at NaNo again this year and I’m excited (again!) at the prospect of playing the game. I’m a “pantser” in that I write by the seat of my pants beginning only with a general idea of where I want to end up. It’s usually a scene in my head, a concept, that I’ll chase all month, attacking it with a variety of word weapons. 

Instead of NaNo being a productive time for me, it’s more like an extended freewrite. An unscripted game in which I play, 2000-words at a time, scenes that are swirling around in my head. The dull scenes. The breakfast scenes. The ones that a writer needs to know but that never make it to the reader’s view. 

From those scenes, I’ll plan the novel. I’ll ask what I really want the book to be about. What story am I really trying to tell? I’ll decide what research I need and what books I should read to get me ready to really write that story. Then I’ll write it. 

NaNoWriMo is, for me, about two things: 1) getting back to practicing every day, and 2) establishing rules for the new literary project. Game on!