Comments on: National No Writing Month: Post-Season Wrap Up

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Thu, 11 Jan 2007 20:11:00 +0000

Support groups for writers. Now it's true--all losers have a support group to join.

This is not to say all people who need support are losers. Far from it! It's just that (as my social worker friend told me) for some reason, it's those who adore and wallow in their troubles who are magnetically drawn to support groups. Thus all groups devolve into either one-upsmanship or Whining Endlessly with Encouragement.

I see NaNoWriMo as identical to online support groups. Just what writers and would-be writers needed: another reason to feel special.

By: Paul Riddell

Paul Riddell — Tue, 05 Dec 2006 01:22:00 +0000

Heather, I wish I could agree with you that rereading some of that tripe might make wannabe writers reconsider their chosen careers, but I know better. Speaking from experience both as a former writer and as a former editor, I can attest that the love affair that talentless writers have to their work, no matter how much you may try to convince them to the contrary, is best described as “being addicted to the smell of your own farts”. Rather than accept that their work isn’t worth being used as litter box liner, they’ll spend all of their time trying to find conspiracies that prevent their work from being accepted. If they get published, then they get even worse, because then they’ll surround themselves with sycophants who tell them that their shit smells like lilac.

By: Heather

Heather — Mon, 04 Dec 2006 15:58:00 +0000

Oh, and lest you think NaNoWriMo is nothing but success stories, then please, by all means amuse yourself with the NaNoWriMo Ate my Soul forum (formerly I hate myself and want to die).

By: Heather

Heather — Mon, 04 Dec 2006 15:56:00 +0000

I offer you this. NaNoWriMo DOES have one valuable function. It gets the true wannabes their always-dreamed-of novels written. Now, this may seem at first glance to be counter-productive, but I postulate that in the long run, this actually discourages them from writing, for several reasons:

1) Writing on a deadline sucks, it's hard, and the stricter your deadline, the crappier the writing is.
2) When they go back and READ their crap, they realize just how awful it is, and get discouraged that they will ever be able to be published.
3) If, against all the odds, they DO actually submit something for publication, they will realize by the mountain-sized pile of rejection slips (form, no less) that no one understands them, and they are better off going to some other, more important company that understands them. Which usually means the scammers who are waiting for these broken souls with open arms.
4) When they get scammed, they lose all hope, and shoot their writing dream in the heart. And go have 2.5 kids, a dog, and a job in a cubicle.
5) It gets them addicted to the crutch that is NaNo-- if they have to have the cheering crowds and fellow writers slogging through, they will never be able to actually write usefully. Because newsflash: writing never has cheering crowds urging you to finish. Even in NaNo. Those are mostly tens of thousands of competitors. It's all an illusion, but in fact, you DO suck. And in order to write successfully at all, you have to write more than 30 days a year.

Sure, it encourages them to write now, but it also serves a useful function in the world of wannabes.

By: Sean Lindsay

Sean Lindsay — Sun, 03 Dec 2006 15:14:00 +0000

You could be waiting a long time for that logic bomb to crack the obsidian casing around my ego.

By: Mike Toot

Mike Toot — Sat, 02 Dec 2006 17:31:00 +0000

I’m still waiting for Sean to realize that, based on 101 Reasons, he’s one of the writers he’s reviling, and then disappearing in a puff of logic.

By: Sya

Sya — Sat, 02 Dec 2006 17:18:00 +0000

I always get the impression that when a writer says, “Some people shouldn’t write,” what they actually mean is, “Other people shouldn’t write so I will have less competition when I submit my Magnum Opus for publication.”