November Is National Novel Writing Month

If you know what National Novel Writing Month is, you probably call it NaNoWriMo and are sighing and possibly rolling your eyes.

If you don’t have a clue what I’m talking about, read this, then swing back by.

My abbreviated history with NaNoWriMo

All you really need to know is that I wrote my first (and to date only published) novel during NaNoWriMo 2013. Here she is, in all her glory:

Then I wrote a bunch more during NaNoWriMo (and the sister event Camp NaNoWriMo, but don’t worry your pretty little heads about her) over the years—something like 8 finished books, 5 partially drafted—but ultimately started to feel like I had changed in such a way that the event was really no longer helpful. In fact, it mostly just stressed me out. I was, after all, writing daily by that point and had also returned to short fiction as well as novelling, so it just wasn’t a great fit anymore.

Why I Am Doing It This Year

So I was doing my typical shit, wandering around the house bemoaning hating writing and thinking how I don’t really feel like writing anything when I got an idea for a book. This is the sort of insanity that goes on when you are a writer. Anyway, it timed out well, since NaNoWriMo starts tomorrow, so I said, eff it. I’ll use that structure since I know it, it gives me a forced deadline and target, and the idea is clear enough.

My homebrew rules

The generic official rules are these:

• Write a novel of 50,000 words or longer in 30 days.
• Start as early as November 1st 12:00 AM (in your timezone) and end no later than November 30th 11:59:59 PM.

That’s it. Those are the only rules.

However there are a few other traditions and suggested guidelines:

• Write with abandon, meaning …

  • Do not self-censor.

  • Do not revise or rewrite (until the month is over). [Ed. Some folks get so extreme with this as to glue a thumbtack on their backspace key.]

  • Do not plan. [Ed. The community has jargon for people who practice this. They’re called “pantsers,” as in the idiom “flying by the seat of your pants.” Those who break with this and plan are called, well, “planners.” And those who do light prep but not too much are called “plantsers,” a rather obvi but still somewhat charming portmanteau of the two. I tend to plants.]

• Keep up with your word count, which is the primary service of the official website.

• Donate to NaNoWriMo and get a halo on your profile photo.

• Download the banners and profile pictures and plaster it all over your website and social media accounts.

• Take part in local writing meetups officially sponsored by the event.

• And, formerly, attend the Night of Writing Dangerously in the middle of the month in the middle of downtown San Francisco. It has since been discontinued. [Ed. I went once in 2016.]

That’s pretty much all of them, so here are my tweaks for this month, for myself:

• No checking word count.
• Minimal planning and preparation. I have some bulletpoints, the basic idea for the structure of the novel, a working title and that’s pretty much it.
• Revise as I go, Hemingway style. This has produced the strongest drafts for me historically, and it keeps me engaged with the work.
• Another Hemmy rule: Stop while you still know what’s coming next.
• The old Dickens-by-way-of-Hama: Do not plan more than a page or two ahead. That one is tough and so is optional.
• No writing meetups. Covid is real, mutherfuckers! Despite what the world would have us think.
• No skipping days. I customarily have often skipped the second day, but I'm not doing that this time.
• No voluntary travel. People sometimes die in November, but I have also taken vacations and traveled for Thanksgiving and things. Not this year.
• I will donate. It’s a good cause. You can, too, right here.
• Use tarot and other cards as needed.

Okay, there are a couple more, but they impact you, so I’ll make a new header.

How this impacts you

Basically the usual operations of this Substack will pause during November and resume in December.

Instead, you will get content from the novel, some behind-the-scenes shit, some art, some song links, and I might make a physical zine each week that contains the chapters from that week. We’ll see.

To keep from inundating you with prose, I will make a tab on the main page where all the NaNoWriMo 2022 posts will be. I will email you a weekly digest and maybe a zine update. Paid subscribers will get a physical copy of the zines provided a) they get completed, and b) you want one.

We will pick back up with “You Can Never Go Back …” and the weekly talkie newsletters in December. Gaucho will return in January 2023.

If you would like to support my writing, please upgrade to a paid subscription. If you cannot, then please do not. But if you can and you want to, please do!

All right. That’s all for now, mah babes. Lots more in the days to come.

Xoxo,

T

AIS 0043