NaNoWriMo? I don’t know her.

More like random write-o.

Photo by Matt Artz on Unsplash

I have a long history of sitting in frying pans while looking at fires and thinking, “Wow, that sure looks like fun!” I spent last month writing far more newsletter posts than anyone wanted, so writing 50,000 words of fiction will surely be a great way to spend November. Right?

At least I didn’t try to convince myself I wouldn’t participate this time. Most years, I say to myself, “Hey, self. Let’s not do National Novel Writing Month this year.” Then, usually on October 30th or 31st, I change my mind and launch myself into a woefully underprepared narrative I have no idea how to revise later. How do you think I got that lovely pile of useless first-draft novels in the first place? This is how, bay-bee: Pantsing.

“Pantsing” is the slang term for writing by the seat of your pants or without much of a plan. Stephen King is probably the most famous/successful pantser, as he notoriously writes his novels without an outline. But most of us aren’t natural novel geniuses like that. I know I’m not. His stories work. His characters have arcs, and the narrative he creates is satisfying. He doesn’t throw a bunch of random paper-thin characters into a locked-up mall and then sling some demons at them, like I did last year in the absolute worst thing I’ve ever written. (He also has the best editors in the business, let’s be real.)

Did I write 50,000 words last November? Yes, I did. Are any of them worth reading? Nope! I still like the idea of the story I was trying to write, but I wasn’t actually ready to write it. For one thing, I don’t know a damned thing about mall security, and my protagonist was a mall security guard. Like… that’ll affect a plot, am I right? Writing about werewolves or whatever, you can just make up what you don’t know. Are the Werewolf Police going to publicly humiliate you for your factual errors? Probably not! But a little research and maybe a few phone calls would have made my mall security situation feel much more real.

I also didn’t have a clear understanding of my villains or what they wanted to achieve. So my story just meandered around and never went anywhere exciting, even when characters started getting hurt and killed. It was an exercise in wasted time and energy, frankly. I’ll never be able to revise this particular novel because there was nothing in it worth revising. It didn’t make sense, had no emotional clarity, and zero tension. If I ever tell that story successfully, I’ll need to rewrite the entire thing. (I do hope to rewrite it someday.)

However, I recently read one of my other first drafts, and it wasn’t terrible at all. It wasn’t pitch-perfect by any means. But it was… revisable. I think I finished its first draft in 2018 or 2019, and I don’t think I’ve become a worse writer in the last 4 or 5 years. (I mean, I hope I haven’t!) But I started that story after a lot of prep, and I didn’t try to finish it in a month. I took my time developing the story and writing it. It was a more thoughtful process, and that seems to suit me better. I’m not saying that no one can successfully pants a novel. I’m just saying that I can’t.

National Novel Writing Month has an almost mystical quality to it. That first win can really change your self-perception. You finally understand that you are capable of conquering a fairly lofty goal, and you also start to feel like a “real” writer, even if you’re not published. When you’re writing with such focus when so many other thousands of people are doing the same thing, it makes a purely private pursuit feel communal. It’s ritual, it’s community. That’s hard to pass up, so I’m participating again.

But this year? I’m not exactly following the rules.

I’m still working on character development and backstory for the novel I want to write next, so I’m not quite ready to jump into the actual narrative yet. I’m also working on an unrelated project for a contest (which I won’t be posting about here for anti-jinx purposes). I didn’t want to lose a month of work on that while I wrote a half-baked first draft of something else.

In the end, I decided that NaNoWriMo is what you make it, so I’ll be working on both projects and compiling my word count from both. Is this a cop-out? I don’t think so. I mean, I’ve won NaNoWriMo before. I’ve already proven that I can plunk out 50,000 words in 30 days -- multiple times, in fact. But this year, I need to compromise.

So, if the NaNoWriMo people want to call the Werewolf Police on me, that’s fine. I’ll find a Vampire Lawyer, and everything will work out in the end.

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