I'll write a few final reflections on NaNo this week, and then I'll shut up about it, I promise.
Today there have been mentions in the blogosphere about agents' inboxes getting filled with NaNo queries, and it's tempting to write it all off as the irritating conceit of the profoundly uninformed wannabe population.
But for the record, all the participants I've talked to are entirely realistic about their NaNo projects.
NaNoWriMo is to writing a novel what gold mining is to making a piece of jewelry.
You write and write and write anything until you hit a vein of Story, and then you follow that until it peters out. Then you write/dig, write/dig until you find some more Story. In the end, you have 50,000 words worth of unrefined Story Ore nuggets and the detritus you created getting to them.
There's a lot of work between this pile of glinty rubble and a shiny work of art (probably a year's worth for me), but every novel has to start somewhere.
I always wonder who these people are who churn out 50,000 words in a month and then submit then unedited. I've never met them.
ReplyDeleteI firmly believe that the people who query their NaNo novels on Dec.1 are the same people who would otherwise have queried with "a great idea" for a book... in short, people who are crazy/inconsiderate/wildly out of touch anyway.
ReplyDeleteCongrats on having some glinty rubble to work with!
Yeah, I think the December Firsters are a myth.
ReplyDeleteThanks and welcome, CKHB!