NaNaNuNu: Day 1

They got me again. We're coordinating NaNoWriMo events at Mason again, but this time with a BUDGET. No more passing out leftover Halloween candy at write-ins.

Come here to watch us suffer.

BTW nano-haters, I care not one crap about your cynicism. Hope it keeps you warm at night. Oh, and shut up anyway.

Focusing NaNoWriMo

I tried NaNoWriMo once, sincerely. Failed very early in the process because my head, like yours I bet, is jammed too far up my own hole to free write any more. Now I sponsor and host NaNo events for the Mason community because I admire how the event provides 1) permission to be creative & 2) loopy constraint for those who need it. A more specific reason I like NaNo is that it demystifies novel writing by reducing the activity to just that, activity. It may be a lie, but exposing the process in this way provides an experience we can’t offer in academic workshops, not really. (I tried last year. My understanding is that most academic novel writing workshops devolve into support group sessions) We train students to write short stories because that’s what we can manage within the physical realities of class size, semesters, etc, and isn’t that just as artificially constrained as reasons for not teaching novel writing? Worse, students come into fiction workshops believing that short stories are easier to write because they are, er, shorter. I always stress writing in the form that one reads for pleasure, and that the forms have different aesthetic shapes that are far more important than word counts.

But back to the demystification angle. I’ve never met a successful novelist who described novel writing as anything other than painful. I’ve never met a student novelist who described novel writing as anything other than joyful. I’ve never met a novelist who could tell me how to write a novel. Or maybe they can and they don’t wanna? So we learn by doing, doing, doing. In the absence of any other willing authority, NaNo exhorts us to do, do, do. I know this sets aside the old whiskey breathed chastisement, “A writer writes”—which may be true after all—but that’s not a good enough answer to any question. It’s certainly not education.

ooo, NaNoWriMo is good for me

Saw Hillary speak last night, which was super cool, but I'm going batty with the stress, possibly because the fate of the world depends on whether I get up in time to vote at 6am tomorrow. Can't sleep, clowns will eat me.

But in the middle of the day today, I took a break to host a NaNoWriMo write-in (the first of 10), and I have to say that was a lovely, peaceful, and creative 90 minutes. Reject negativity.

Si Se Puede, babies.

aaargh. NaNoWriMo is a Ninja

what? it's oct 15? just two weeks to go? yikes. over the past two years i've volunteered to coordinate a few nanowrimo activities (National Novel Writing Month)for students at George Mason University. This year, being insanely busy, I forgot about NaNo, and now I'm getting messages from students and faculty about what we're gonna do this year. We've tried a few things, but what the people really want are write-ins--time in a room together writing. I find it weird, completely at odds with the loneliness of noveling, but really fun to observe.

Chris Baty visited mason a year ago to talk about NaNo, and he did a really cool routine about the tyranny of revision impulse and how everyone has a perfect first chapter.