Why failing to write a novel was a good thing
Saturday, December 5th, 2009
My final NaNoWriMo status. Not exactly a home run.
Good news: I managed to beat my previous record for National Novel Writing Month! After four false starts, my fifth novel concept shaped up into a healthy 470 words before the deadline at midnight on November 30.
Detractors might impatiently call my attention to the supposed 50,000-word requirement to “win” NaNoWriMo, waving their .pdf certificates of completion haughtily in my face. Frankly, they can stuff it. Writing isn’t about word counts and deadlines!* It’s about finding a way to tell a story that’s enjoyable to read and meaningful or useful to its audience.
Portlanders apparently wrote the equivalent of a library over the last month.
It’s true that I never really got much prose written throughout the last month, but I spent dozens of hours thinking about the process and forcing hundreds of ideas and themes through a trial by paper. When I picked up a novel, I began to realize that what I was enjoying was more craft than art — the product of countless hours of trial-and-error, research and revision, and occasional frustration and hopelessness.
The residual effect of not finishing a novel for National Novel Writing Month is that I’m still writing my ideas down. I’m still thinking about what I would have to say. Writing has always been one of those things I’m naturally compelled to do, even if it ends up being disposable, but I’ve never attempted to write something in a long format. I’ve got myself to blame for that. Once I was two years into college and the looming specter of declaring a major was swooping down upon me, eager to suck all the fun out of my scattershot class schedules, I realized I had to commit to something. Journalism drew me in with the promise of making me a much better writer, with strong command of grammar and an ability to write well under pressure. All of those promises came true, but in the process I had forgotten how to write for fun.
Fortunately, last month proved it’s never to late to figure that out.
*It is if you’re a journalist.