“Anyway, whenever people express their reluctance to
invest time in something that won’t have proven results, I ask them what they
do for fun on weekends. Invariably, the time they spend running around on
basketball courts, rearranging Scrabble tiles, or slaying video-game monsters
is not done in an effort to make millions of dollars from corporate sponsorship. Or because they think it will make them famous. No. They do it
because the challenge of the game simply feels good. They do it because they
like to compete; […] because it feels really, really nice to just lose
themselves in the visceral pleasure of an activity. Novel writing is just a
recreational sport where you don’t have to get up out of your chair.”
In “No Plot No Problem! A
Low-Stress, High-Velocity Guide to Writing a Novel in 30 Days” by Chris Baty”
In the last few
years I’ve read at least one book a week. Back in the day the number was two books
a week. And yes I haven’t read Twilight
yet. Have you? THAT, my dear, is the drivel that you would expect from us
non-professional WriMos. I’ve been working on a SF novel since, I don’t know,
ages, and if it never gets published I will be fine with that because it's for
MY enjoyment and satisfaction that I could do it... Every moron seems to think
that we're all illiterate Neanderthals who maybe can read Dick and Jane and Dr.
Seuss, but I've read Canterbury Tales in the Middle English, Beowulf in Olde English
and Shakespeare in Elizabethan English...Like to see YOU try that! Until you've
actually sat down at the keyboard with music blaring from your speakers,
commiserating with your fellows about how to write a particular scene, then you
know what it means to undertake this journey of discovery. Research shows that
Opinions are like A-Holes...everyone has one. Is my WriMo work this year bound
to win me the Booker, Pulitzer and the Nobel Prize for Literature and place me
in the same category as Stephen King and J. K. Rowling? Gee, it'd be nice, but
no, probably not. Almost certainly not. So why is that a problem? Along the
way, you’ve forgotten (if you ever knew) that one learns as much from one's
failures as from one's successes -- probably more. It’ll help me learn more
about plotting and structure, about voice and dialogue and about how to create
characters. Just in case you're not sure, those are all good things. In
addition, I have structure and support and, since I intend to complete it this
year, it will also help me develop discipline in my writing. Those are also
good things, just in case you're not sure about that, either.
50K or bust!
NB: I am
participating in the WriMo for the first time this year. I’m sure I’ll be
learning so much about my writing style and genre and learning about myself
through some of the characters I write. As for my novel, I doubt it will ever
see the light of day. But I know it will force me to spend an hour and a half a
day putting words on paper, and that process with shake loose the seeds of a
thousand other stories, and I suppose everyone is entitled to their opinion.
I’ve trouble seeing that endeavour as a wasted effort in my development as a
writer, regardless of what dark, mothballed fate might await the result (as soon
as I'm finished cannibalizing it for use in future works).
