November is here and I don't want accountability.

[cpolk]

I have never been good at NaNoWriMo. I've tried a bunch of times and it simply hasn't really worked out. I did rebel in 2015 and counted editing instead of drafting, and succeeded at doing a major, major revision of Witchmark, getting it from 53,000 words to 72,000 words in the process. But drafting? oh no, never.

And I have a good reason to not even try this year, as I am going to have major surgery in a week and then I will be recovering, so there's no way I could reasonably expect to even try.

I keep telling myself that. and I keep on feeling like i'm pretending to be too cool for school because I know deep inside I can't hack it.

Which is crap and i know it, but still.

But I still feel like i should be setting some kind of goal. So okay, fine.

I'm going to read.

I'm hoping that I will read two novels in November. I've had a hard time staying focused on reading for a while, but I did fly through Tread of Angels in a couple days. So let's see what I get up to reading while I'm recovering.

Have you decided to do something in November, or does that way lie madness for you too?

Comments

[mrissa]

I actually don't want accountability either. Accountability makes me prickly and resentful. Talk to you about my work? sure! Tell you exactly what I did and when I did it? You're not the boss of me, Cee.

But also...NaNo is not and should not be the default. It's a thing that people can do, not the thing we have to do.

I think that's it for me too

[cpolk]

"You should do this" often results in me definitely not wanting to do it

But sometimes I get caught up in what I should be able to achieve at exactly the same time and

That's Na No for me. I know I think its not useful for me but I still feel bad when i don't do it

[fadeaccompli]

I am with you on that one! There's a narrow line between "a little inspirational pressure" and "ugh, it's like doing the dishes" that is very easy to cross, and I have learned the hard way that it's a bad bad thing when my writing ends up on the wrong side of the line.

[matociquala]

Every month is NaNoWriMo around here but I do try to take it at a more sustainable pace than all that....

[kore]

I kind of miss the 3-Day Novel contest, which was wilder than NaNo ever dreamed of being (for all I know, it's still going, but NaNo is the thing getting the spotlight year after year).

[marthawells]

Every time I've tried to do NaNoWriMo something happens and I end up getting nothing done, it's like a curse.

[yhlee]

I know NaNo is not for everyone! But I love the idea of it and especially the thought of being part of that community of writers, even if just for that month. And also, I never last more than three days (if you round up) or a few thousand words. I just can't do it.

[pameladean]

Absolutely the way to madness for me. Also, I have to say, if I were going to choose a month to devote to fanatical unhealthy writing, November would NOT be the month. But I'm not going to do that at all. No "push" of that sort I've ever attempted, whether in a group setting or as a loner, has ever helped in any way. If I'm having trouble with writing, I need to figure out why, not come charging in and break things, which I am aware is not really what Nanowrimo does as a general rule, but is what it does for me. Or rather, to me. Or what I let it do to me. It's just not a good idea for me.

P.

[kore]

WHY DID THEY PICK NOVEMBER, DAMN. I think it first started out as a guy and some of his friends who had no friends and family around in a strange city? So they did it to have something to do?

[kore]

Oh man good luck with the surgery! I like reading as a goal for November, too.

I did "win" NaNo once with a very long shapeless unfinished fanfic, and just writing that much taught me a lot about actual writing and my process, but it also wore me out and it contributed to my getting fired from a database maintenance job I was hoping would get me out of the pink-collar ghetto. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I think it doesn't work for me as a personal emotional thing -- the holidaze are really fraught for me, starting right in early November with Halloween being over (boo) and my birthday and then all the demanded celebrating, ugh. Plus if I want to do anything at all for Thanksgiving that knocks out a lot of writing time. Either October or December might work better for me.

My opinion about Accountability Exercises, which is what NaNo really is, is that it's great for teaching butt-in-chair and how to write through that "oh no I can't do this" feeling but it doesn't actually teach you much about writing, much less plot and structure and blahblah. The writers I know use it as a kind of getting-in-training thing but most of them have already established habits. It's fun and very famous by now but I think something like Novel in 90 (maybe defunct?) or a stable writing group serves people better who actually want to write. But if people are just having fun with it and making friends, that's cool! I'm certainly not going to sneer at that.