![[Logo]](/images/101ReasonsLogo.png "101 Reasons to Stop Writing")
I’ve said a lot this month about the challenge of writing a novel in 30 days, not all of it positive. But I don’t know what you think, and unlike your typical NaNo participant, I don’t expect you to read through thousands of words of the written equivalent of that feeling you get when you eat poorly cleaned shrimp before asking for your opinion.
So put yourself in this hypothetical frame of mind: you’re about to purchase a novel (a stretch for some of you, I’m sure), you’re reading the back cover blurb, and you discover this nugget of information:
Loading ...While you’re here, if you know of any examples of novels written in 30 days or less — that don’t suck, like a mudslide in a collapsing mineshaft — please let me know in the comments below. (You can’t mention your own novel, unless it was published by a company that paid you, and copies were sold to people you don’t know.)
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Iain Banks writes 15K words a week, which is faster than the NaNoWriMo pace and his books are excellent.
And the challenge is to finish the first draft, not the novel. So if the blurb said the first draft was written in 30 days and that the author had put it through another three drafts to polish it up I certainly wouldn’t object to reading the book.
I know a number of e-book writers who’ve sold their NaNo books. But like Chris said, they viewed their NaNo as a draft, not the finished thing, and they’ve taken the time to edit it and polish it up properly.
Chris, Susan, to be fair to me (one of my favourite things to do):
* I don’t state in the Poll question that the novel by A. Writer is a product of NaNoWriMo. I just imply it, very strongly.
* The NaNo website very clearly states: “The goal is to write a 175-page (50,000-word) novel by midnight, November 30.”
Interpreting this to mean “a 50,000 word first draft” or “50,000 words of a novel” is, I believe, a deliberate misinterpretation of the NaNo challenge, in order to make it seem something more than pointless.
If I found out that someone used a NaNo-equivalent to get published, and did no more work on it than the 30 days? OMG EEEW.
I know what the novels I churn out during NaNo are like… and they are NOT fit for public consumption. I don’t even consider them a first draft… they’re draft 0… the regurgitation of all the fucked up ideas in my head, me getting things on paper, so that I have something tangible to work with and to whip into a rough draft form that I’m actually willing to share for critique.
You can’t write deathless prose in 30 days. Famous Dead Guy might have been able to… but you’re NOT Famous Dead Guy.
I’m still not sure what the big deal is. I mean, I write about 1,000 words a day for my blog without much effort, and look at the quality of…oh, never mind. Terrible example.
Peace,
- Dennis
http://www.donttipthewaiter.blogspot.com
I would think: Well, maybe, like Raymond Carver, the writer was lucky enough to have a really fabulous editor who spent the next five years of his life devoted to rewrites, polishing the rambling musings into a minimalist work of art. No, never mind, editors don’t work that hard anymore. I would think it a miracle that it was published and notify the Pope.
Jack Woodford claimed that he wrote a 75,000 word novel in three days. He didn’t mention the title, but I did read God’s Lap, and found it still read surprisingly well.
Got into a fight in a college class about “On the Road.”
I basically said that although the myth of the stream-of-consciousness, Onion-Skin-Scroll was Kewl and all, Viking Press did demand it to be re-written ( And readable) before publishing it.
The other guy’s point: Making it Kow-tow do the dictates of the Squares was a reprehensible sin.
My Point: All Rough drafts suck. Even those written by Geniuses. Especially drug induced rough drafts.
30 days?
I’ve spent upwards of a year on a fanfic. The writing’s easy… It’s the editing that’s hard! My personal motto is: “The last edit you do is one edit too few.”
Oh yeah, I’ve got no life.
But then … you knew that already.
Ruic, congratulations on finishing your second Transformers fanfic novel. I can’t wait to see the turd.
Thanks!
Kerouac? I understand it took him three days to write Subterraneans and I think three weeks to write On the Road (and I actually prefer the former to the latter). To be fair, I think there was a lot of meth involved which may constitute ‘cheating’ in some circles.
It depends. If this person devoted three or four hours a day to writing it, and has a knack for writing, it’s probably better than the NaNo writer who spends an hour a day on a work of such low quality that I could have outdone it when I was in the sixth grade.
I’d probably read the first three or four pages to decide whether it’s worth buying or not. I usually do that anyway when I encounter a new author that looks interesting enough.
Clarification: By “new author,” I mean new to me, not necessarily new to the market. If I could get my hands on more works by the sci-fi “Golden Age” authors, I’d subject them to the same test before spending money on them. The only exception I’ve encountered lately was The Naked Ape, which was special-ordered at my father’s urging. (Seriously, he spent months telling me I should read it.) And that wasn’t a novel.
Mr. Lindsay,
Thought you might enjoy this. I was going to leave it as a comment at one point, but it got too long.
Eric:
“This is partly because, as an editor of one kind or another for a few campus publications, I encounter writing by non-majors (read: engineers), which is even worse than the usual fare.” You might want to fix that before the Grammar Nazis pick it apart. ;P
I feel your pain. I saw a flier in my school’s education building that said, “NEED A TYPIST? Call [number]–we can type you [sic] paper up for you!” or something to that effect. I was tempted to call and accuse them of false advertising–if they can’t catch an error like that (and this error was repeated several times in the ad), they sure as hell shouldn’t be trusted to type up a paper that’s actually going to be graded.
Eric, I feel your pain (having been married to an English major in the past who thought she was a poet), but look at the bright side. Considering that English degrees are not real degrees but licenses to starve to death with the blessings of society, we should encourage English graduates to contribute further to society. After all, nobody else is dumb enough to work at Borders for ten or fifteen years because they “want to stay in the publishing business”.
I think I remember from university days that Jack Kerouac wrote the first draft of The Subterraneans in a three-day-long, amphetamine-driven session. It’s not his best work, but it’s not bad either.
Close to thirty days and one of the greatest American novels written, Faulkner claimed to have written As I Lay Dying in 6 weeks without changing a word. Then again, Faulkner was a prolific liar.
With regard to “the usual fare”… I’ve always been taught that it was “fare.” Are you suggesting “fair,” “fares,” or something else? I’m a little confused.
Paul: “Considering that English degrees are not real degrees but licenses to starve to death with the blessings of society, we should encourage English graduates to contribute further to society.”
Amen. (And I’m an English major.) As for Borders, I’ve always made it my goal to avoid that particular hell. Hopefully I’ll be working for Random House come late spring (I interned there last summer). Which means, of course, that I’ve read a couple of crappy novels from the slush pile.
Oh God, don’t even get me started on how much I hate stream-of-consciousness style writing. College freshmen read Keroauc and then think stringing together a few thousand ‘cool sounding’ phrases makes a legitimate novel. Because ‘you know it captures how life really issss man’ or some other marijuana induced rambling.
You saw the NY Times Papercuts blog about your site, right?
http://papercuts.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/11/27/feel-your-inner-muse-wither-to-nothing/
JBM, I saw it. It’s nice, I suppose. They spelled my name correctly.
Getting coverage in the New York Times Online Edition is meant to be good, right? I mean, I live in Australia, so I’m not exactly sure where New York is.
It’s not bad, though Papercuts is buried deep in the site so only purusers of the Books Section will see it. Since the only people who read the Books section are aspiring writers, I think you’re in pretty much the same place you started off from.
Yeah. I have a phrase I use for novels written in 30 days . . . “the rough draft.” And I have a definition for the term “writer”: Someone who regards every month as novel writing month.
Someone asked me if I was participating in National Novel Writing Month, since I had edits to do for my novel under contract already. I said “Yeah, I have been for the last 10 month as well.”