![[Logo]](/images/101ReasonsLogo.png "101 Reasons to Stop Writing")
Ah, National NOvel Writing Month, that magical time of the year where over a hundred thousand confused misanthropes sequester themselves from their daily miseries to join a massively multiplayer online game where every character is a writer, and when you amass 50,000 points you Win! It’s just like World of Warcraft, but with no graphics, sound, or incremental reward system. Remember, folks, the first month is free, but an ongoing subscription requires talent.
(This year, I’m going undercover as a NaNo participant, to see what havoc I can wreak upon the enterprise from within. If you want to help, sign up to NaNo then post a random number as your daily wordcount. Even better, keep posting zero! With your help, we can achieve our goal of reducing their average wordcount by a digit.)
To counter the unbelievable surge in temporary motivation that NaNo causes, November needs 2 new Demotivators:
NaNoWriMo
Almost as challenging as solving 500 crosswords,
and almost as rewarding.
click for larger version (widescreen)
Photo by Jane Sawyer, of MorgueFile.
NaNoWriMo
It’s all fun and games until you expect someone else to read it.
![[TITLE] Demotivator (Medium)](http://101reasonstostopwriting.com/uploads/2008/11/nanowrimo_2_n.jpg)
click for larger version (widescreen)
Photo by Andrea Church, of MorgueFile.
And if that’s not enough to dissuade you, check out last year’s 2 November Demotivators as well.
Loading ...
[...] Random Feed wrote an interesting post today onHere’s a quick excerptAh, National NOvel Writing Month, that magical time of the year where over a hundred thousand confused misanthropes sequester themselves from their daily miseries to join a massively multiplayer online game where every character is a writer, and when you amass 50,000 points you Win! It’s just like World of Warcraft, but with no graphics, sound, or incremental reward system. Remember, folks, the first month is free, but an ongoing subscription requires talent. (This year, I’m going undercover a [...]
I see you guys are up to your usual tricks. Love the take on Rush Limbaugh’s (spelling?)keep Hilary out of the White House tactics.
I smell a bitter once writer, eh?
So writing isn’t for you. There are plenty of other things in the world for you to try. I don’t understand how making people feel like crap over something they love is helping you or anyone else, to be honest.
Then again, maybe this whole thing is beautifully sarcastic. And if it is, I may have to love you forever. I’m going to hold onto that hope. xp
I sense a lot of bitterness, and none of the joy that can come from creation. Pity you chose to use your powers for ill.
I love it! you’re actually doing the OPPOSITE of what you’re intending. *goes back to writing* TTYL
http://www.nanowrimo.org/eng/node/3129623
You’re famous, dude. LOL. Again.
Where have you BEEN, you slack ass?
At least you haven’t been writing.
Heather, thanks for the link! I just adore reading my fan mail.
Do you think that the proportion of humourless whiners in that thread is representative of NaNos in general, or writers in general?
Sean, I’d say that it’s more indicative of NaNo wankers, because I used to get the same level of whining in the pre-Web days from the wannabes who were going to be HUGE one day…if they could bother to quit hanging around the bookstore and get to writing. Once again, their spending time fussing about 101 Reasons gives them a great excuse not to finish up that NaNo manuscript, because then they’d have to submit it after finishing it. If they submit it, it just may get rejected, so it’s easier to blame the conspiracy of poopyheads that are keeping them down and continue to brag about manuscripts that haven’t been touched since 1987.
Of course, this year they have an added incentive to get to work: right now, Borders Books & Music stock is running just a little over $2 US per share, and any number of financial analysts are predicting liquidation doom after the end of the year. (When Motley Fool compares Borders to Circuit City, Talbot’s, and Warner Music, you know the mess is even worse than previously realized.) The smart Borders employees are going to leverage their extensive contacts with local wannabe writers and musicians into seven or eight bestsellers in the next three years, but that only works if they have their one big novel already on the shelves when Borders takes the Big Sleep. Otherwise, they’ll have to get another job when Borders dies, one that doesn’t allow them to stay in the publishing business, and then they’ll never have enough time to become famous. Get cracking now, kids, before the bookselling business turns back into pumpkins and mice.
Hey, there’s no need to hate on the crosswords! Cryptics are mind-breaking…
I hope the next 50,000 words you disgurgitate will be the other 84 reasons.
Mind, your hypocrisy has been duly noted by me, as well as an entire comment-thread’s worth of other humourless, self-aggrandising wannabes. This can and will be used against you when you have damn-near convinced us to quit in the future.
Paul, you are the minute hand on the Borders Death Watch clock. I’m counting on you to record the exact moment of the end of empire.
Austin, I’ve been writing this blog (off and on) for over two years now. You think that a bunch of whining Nanos who have duly noted my hypocrisy is going to affect me in the slightest?
And “disgurgitate” is not a word, not matter how many times you type it in a month.
I’ll have you know that I have lots of humour. My mommy said so. I’m gonna get published, JUST LIKE PAOLINI.
Disgurgitate would imply that Sean has actually WRITTEN those other 84 reasons.
Trust me. His sorry ass hasn’t.
You’re sort of a strange little person aren’t you? Did you fail to achieve the goal and it made you bitter? Or do you just hate people who like things you don’t. Or can you just not handle the fact that there are people who enjoy writing or something?
Sean, you are, just as you were last year at this very same time, my hero! You are still one of the funniest writers on the Net.
Peace,
Dennis
Oh, you’ve got it. Borders won’t survive to see Groundhog’s Day. Barnes & Noble is reporting that it expects the shittiest Christmas season in its entire history. The number of Frumpy Fiftysomething’s Used Books and Quiet Desperation Emporium owners whining about how the yellowed and tattered “Buy Local” signs in the front window aren’t drawing in business currently equal the number of reporters willing to run this as news. Amazon is only hanging around because it sells stuff other than books, and Publisher’s Weekly can’t stop whining about how Sarah Palin allegedly has a $7 million book contract. (Never mind that she’s probably going to have to pay $6.98 million of it back when the sales numbers come back.) And yet every toadsucker playing the NaNoWriMo Shuffle figures that the 50,000 words is the hard part, and that it’s just a matter of months before they see huge piles of their latest novel for sale, with fans and bystanders kicking each other in the heart to get a copy.
Me, I’m just having fun. I actually showed up at a local science fiction convention last month to sell plants, and it was the first time that I actually made money at a convention instead of losing it. The best thing about it was watching all of the POD publishers and writers desperately trying to sell their books to people who had no interest in buying books at all. Half of the authors were there dressed as characters in their novels: when you find that the only way to sell your book is by putting on a crinoline gown and corset, squishing your breasts to the point that people across the street are afraid that they’ll explode and take out half the neighborhood, and wearing the most godawful red wig in haberdashery history, all for two sales over a three-day weekend, maybe you need to Stop Writing.
You know, the best way to avoid people whining about your negativity is to be clever enough to make it clear you’re satirizing something. Otherwise sarcasm becomes offensive. (I believe my point makes my point? lol) Don’t complain about whiners who missed the point, ask: why did they miss the point?
Love, some guy.
generic first name, I’m not complaining about whiners who missed the point, they’re complaining about me. What you’re really advocating is writing to the lowest common denominator, which is the opposite of clever.
The people who “miss the point” of 101 Reasons are precisely the people who should take it literally.
Glad to see a new post up here after a long time (I’m not counting the political diversion).
The issue with booksellers is going to be extra dicey for publishers, who you just know are going to get sent back a gajillion books from liquidators. Congrats on negotiating a contract based on returnable goods – bye bye liquid assets much? It will be interesting to see how well the stronger publishers weather the storm.
As for the haters over on NaNo, there’s a reason I have no ‘friends’ on my profile there, apart from my usual lack of deoderant and terrible bedside manner. Okay, maybe only because of that reason. Nevertheless, I get the distinct impression that the average age of participants is about sixteen or something. Which is actually fine for people who are sixteen (though maybe not if they’re all cooped up behind a word processor, but that’s their problem).
But for those of us more than double that age the attraction of spending great wads of time getting involved in inane threads like “halp I am 45,000 words behind and I don’t feel like writing, someone please validate my existence” gets old pretty fast.
The most epic NaNo moment I had recently came from elsewhere though. While laughing my butt off at one lulu customer, I came across another, who had posted his POD boasting it as the ’Winner of the 2006 NaNoWriMo Award’. Whoah! Someone alert the NYT we have a best seller.
Yet I still find myself participating in it this year. There must be something about it to offset the silliness eh? Or maybe it’s just something in the water.
I beg to differ: NaNoWriMo provides a useful community service in that it automates the ugliest part of the bad-amateur-write process: forcing some poor sap to actually READ the drivel you’ve produced. The computer program that determines whether you “win” at NaNoWriMo seems to have an infinite tolerance for crappy writing (at least it hasn’t thrown up yet), and the focus on quickly accumulating word count for the month deters participants from sharing their literary excresence with you. They might attempt this at the end of the month, but given the “flash mob” nature of NaNo, what’s the chance you’re even going to see any of these people again, let alone have them press a manuscript into your hands and ask for comments? Consider the alternative: the millions of ongoing “writers’ groups” that meet in public library conference rooms across the country every Saturday, painstakingly going over the third installment of the eighteenth chapter of the second book of a suburban housewife’s million-word “Harry Potter” clone. To the extent that NaNoWriMo can get some of these housewives to keep their writing to themselves (and the computer, of course), it’s doing the world a favor.
Yet you have HalSpaceJock on your list of writing buddies. He has written more than one book during NanoWriMo that turned into published novels. What a wast of time, huh? Maybe he should stop writing just because you couldn’t make it.
I love to hear people who take themselves far too seriously getting angry at a someone who actually has experience in a given field. Just because someone is pointing out the sad, sad, but oh so painful reality that making money as a novel writer is about as likely as hitting the lottery, you guys try to rip him apart. So what if he’s a jerk? He’s not lying, is he?
Of all the angry postings on the NaNo BBS about 101 reasons to stop writing, this has to be the best:
“Mr. Lindsay needs to understand that some of us are serious writers who use NaNo as a tool to bang out the first draft of truly publishable material under a self-imposed deadline. (Yes, I have published, to some acclaim.)”
Notice that last part: “Yes, I have published, to some acclaim.” So, you would think this person would enter NaNo under his/her own name, or at least list said real name on his/her “profile” page, right? After all, if (s)he’s got stuff in print, isn’t the NaNo crowd a potential market? You would think that…
But you would be wrong. (S)he posts under a three-letter acronym, and the profile page contains nothing about who (s)he is or what (s)he’s written. Almost as if this NaNo’er wants to make sure his/her “legitimate” publisher and audience don’t find out…
Why hate on NaNo? It’s just a bit of fun, but it’s not for everyone.
Also, dear NaNo wankers: get over it. Don’t you have a novel to write?
I don’t know if I’m offended or amused. I certainly don’t have any delusions of actually PUBLISHING my NaNo novel. Good Lord, I’d be embarassed for the publishing world if an editor actually accepted it. NaNo is for FUN, not for publishing.
I’ve decided I’m amused, by the way.
Wow. You do know NaNo is linked to this site right? We all find it quiet amusing. XD And the point of NaNo isn’t to get it published, it’s just to have some fun. It’s a challenge, and that’s what life is all about, challenging yourself and strivingto meet that challenge, whether the challenge be to become a vet, get straight A’s or write 50,000 words in a month. And we aren’t a bunch of writers w/ too much time on our hands. Really you can easily write 50,000 words in five days, it would just be a lot of writing. Writing 1,667 words a day is nothing. It’s about a page a page and a half, that’s about what a real author would write in a day, NaNo is all about being consistent w/ it. It’s about actually finshng that novel you’ve always wanted to write, nothing more, nothing less. If you have no intrest in writing a novel, then don’t. I hope this site is all sarcastic, because if it’s not it just makes you a kind of sad person.
wow, like seriously, nanowrimo is not a game, it’s a challenge. it offers people a goal and a purpose to devote themselves to for a month. it’s not as easy to write a novel in 30 days as it is to, well, not write a novel ever. the goal of nanowrimo, for me as a participant, is to kick out the 50,000 words this month so i can edit them over the next eleven. or at the very least, brag to the rest of the world that i had the guts to commit to something this challenging and actually achieve it. writing is something that nanoists love to do, and that’s why we participate. if all you care about is ruining the nanowrimo average, that’s fine, just don’t dis on the participants because we actually have motivation. and finally, i’d like to thank you in all honesty, because reading this just gave me the little boost that i needed to stop procrastinating my last couple thousand words and finish.
ash: next year’s challenge is to discover what that little key marked “shift” does.
(Reason 176 to Stop Writing: You are not e. e. cummings.)
If only NaNoWriMo stood for National No Writing Month.
Sara Gruen. Don’t play dumb.