I’m sorry. It’s a procrastinator’s wet dream. It’s all it is. Come November, this large internet community jumps on the “Imma be a writer!” bandwagon, and come December, they jump off just as quickly. Do I hear about people editing their work afterwards? No, and I bet you that most NaNo “winners” don’t *touch* their work when November is over. Instead of dealing with the harsh reality of the world of writing, NaNo participants pat each other on the back and offer empty congratulations and good-for-yous for reaching this magical word count, as it is the ultimate goal. Usually, NaNoWriMo is simply a feel-good placebo for the procrastinator who knows that, deep down, they’ll never become the writer they daydream of becoming.

Why should anyone need a large internet community in order to be motivated to write? If you’re serious about writing, that motivation should already be there. It shouldn’t be a large popular internet circlejerk in order for someone to take that initiative.

I’ve been a screenwriter for the past six years. Last year, I developed a project that was just screaming to become a novel instead of a screenplay. All of this coincided with NaNoWriMo, and I decided to give NaNo a shot.

My novel sucked big fat goose eggs. I stopped myself about halfway through when I realized I took out all contractions just to increase my wordcount. Oy.

To me, that’s not what writing is about, I learned from it and vowed not to do it again this year.

This year, I’m using NaNo as a reward. If I get my “real” writing done during the day, I can spend a few hours at night working on my NaNo novel. So far, it’s worked out for me. Of course, I’m only on day one…

But I do know a few people that are doing NaNo this year simply because the deadlines and the community help them stay on task. And if at the end of the month, they have 50K or 25K or 10K words on paper, it’s more than they started with. The trick is to keep them writing the other eleven months out of the year.

My first Nanowrimo: I wrote a book that I had been thinking about for years and only got 15,000 words down. At least, I had 15,000 words written. When I began rewriting it, it told me which directions I couldn’t go into, and taught me a lot about planning… and character motives, conflict, and growth.

My Nanowrimo experience has proven invaluable in many ways… I can write well quickly, I can edit, really well.

Last years Nanowrimo, while I didn’t win… I found out that I could write 10,000 words that sort of made sense in 6 hours (probably 5,000 words that makes sense in 6 lol). I learned that my characters were pretty flesh, the problem, is that I didn’t give them enough conflict to allow them to shine. I’ve made friends that I’ll talk to always, and I’ve learned about so many resources through the serious writers who do it.

Yes, Nanowrimo is about first drafts, and taking risks… but for me, more importantly it’s about learning how to write… and you can read many things about writing and have a good idea about how it’s supposed to go. But until you Go out and force yourself to write, you won’t know how it goes.

I learned how to write better, faster and learned different techniques, the importance of research, as well as motivations comes from yourself.

I haven’t “won” a year, but I’ve produced things that I’ve never thought possible, and although in it’s current state it isn’t publishable, I’m proud and glad I did it… because otherwise I wouldn’t have learned the things you need to learn, before you can take on a project this size.

I go for the camaraderie. I’m always writing multiple projects; one of them might as well be a 50K novel or the start of something longer.