24 Sep Has NaNoWriMo made me a quick writer, not a good writer?

I was first told about the National Novel Writing Month, NaNoWriMo, by one of my Canadian friends who- “remembered that I liked to write stuff”. She told me about this event on October 30^th, 2002, two days before the event. I thought to myself- why not!? I hit the finish line with two hours to go, writing in the bedroom, since at that time, my partner, now wife, and I lived in a tiny 2-bedroom apartment that looked like a roadside motel. Did I achieve? Yes! Was I proud that I hit the word goal? Yes! Was the manuscript any good? Well.

For those uninitiated, NaNoWriMo is an annual challenge to write 50 000 words in the 30 days of November. The current history of the event is mired in shadiness which I don’t want to go into, suffice to say that the idea still resonates with writers, and the people in my writing area still participate, however we are pirates and are no longer officially sanctioned by the organisation. There was a fan, it got browned.

What that first month taught me was, with the right push, with the right people writing with me, a lot can be done. It was a blur, it was meeting with other writers who struggled, who wrote in my genre, who were REAL PEOPLE! I’m still friends with many of the writers I met in 2002!

I’ve competed in Nanowrimo every year since 2002, and each year I have hit the 50k word finish line. It has become a stubborn trait of mine, no matter what is going on in the real world, dammit I will hit 50k! Healthy competition, I know.

One of the things I have started to notice as I have evolved as a writer, sometimes I rush scenes, or rush to get to signposts in the story, because of the nature of Nanowrimo. I have my story planned and plotted out, using the Save the Cat Writes a Novel beat sheet. (https://www.jessicabrody.com/save-the-cat-for-novels/). I’ve discovered about myself that I cannot be a pantser style writer like I was in the beginning of my Nanowrimo crusade, I need signposts. I can’t be a plotter either because sometimes I like to meander with the prose. So I have become a plantser.

Having these signposts in front of me, I want to see what happens too! So I tend to rush through the story, urged on by 1667 words a day and many writers online and in person also forging their novels to a deadline. In recent years I’ve been wondering – if the urgency and speed of Nanowrimo is actually a bad thing for my writing?

The Pressure of a Word Count

To be honest, Nanowrimo is all about the word count. It’s right there on the tin- 50 000 words in November. You hit that, and you “win”. The event did encourage anyone who wanted to be a writer to get in and get your hands dirty with words, which is an ethic I whole-heartedly encourage. Too many people think- I can’t write, hence I won’t!

(An aside here, I may switch tense from present to past tense when speaking about Nanowrimo. It’s complicated…)

The pressure of that word count can make you rush. Miss a day and you’re 1667 words behind schedule. You’ll have to write twice as fast to catch up. Is doing so, bad for your work?

I’ve learned over the years that tracking word count, the number of words you write per day, is not necessarily that healthy. I can write 2000 words of crap per day, does that mean I’ve hit my word goal? Well, if writing 2000 words is my goal, then yes. But as I have grown as a writer, I am more interested in writing good words, words that promote my story, my plot, forwards. I am more interested in writing words that I don’t have to remove in the editing process.

What I am trying to do with my Nanowrimo work now is, understand that I am not going to get near the end of my story at 50 000 words, and that’s okay. Understand that there is still a long way to go, and I will get there.

The last Nanowrimo I did, back in 2023 (at the time of writing this), the story was a fantasy story, with elements taken from D&D, but then spread out over a solar system. There was a rogue planet that was going to destroy stuff, and the heroes had to find a way to ‘defeat’ a planet. I had plotted out the storyline, and the characters, I knew how they were going to beat the Big Bad.

I did not get anywhere near the end of the story. I may have reached the halfway point, on the Elven Space Tree (yes, it’s so much cooler than it sounds). I had space zombies attacking, again, so much cooler in the book, and my heroes had to choose between staying and fighting or escaping to fight the bigger bad. This was the last scene I wrote before November ticked over to December. Even now I want to go back and rewrite it because it didn’t have the same shock and awe about it as I wanted. But I just wrote because the seconds were ticking down to midnight.

I wanted to finish the scene, even though I knew I was going to rewrite it, purely because the clock was ticking to the end of November. I think this realisation is what has stuck with me since and what prompted this musing blog post from me.

I reached halfway and said to myself- I am going to rewrite that scene. Have I? Have I touched this piece of writing since finishing Nanowrimo? No, I haven’t, and I’m not one to get back on the project as a part 2 for the next Nanowrimo either. So it is sitting there, half written, waiting to be completed.

I raced to the finish line and bounced over it, grabbing my winner’s stuff and then let it sit. To be fair I am struggling to rewrite the third book in a series that I am publishing, so there is ‘real writing work to do’, but given how much fun I have writing new fiction, why don’t I?

Honestly, that question is for another blog, else I get side-tracked from my original question.

Anne Rallen says- the writers who make the most are the ones who can write fast. I know I can write fast. 67 plus words per minute, according to a few online typing tests. I can smash the daily 1667 words in less than an hour. The other day at work I wrote a 4 000 word article in an afternoon. Yes, I have a writing day job, I am a professional writer, so I guess that adage is correct for me.

Too fast, too bad?

I know it may sound funny that I feel I write novels too fast, when the ones I write are upwards of 80, 000 words or more. My realisation of this has me still writing words fast, but slowing down my progression through the books. This, I don’t mind so much, but it does leave me with novels only half finished.

My biggest thing I need to do is to keep writing the story at the pace I do November, so I finish it in 2 months rather than 2 years.

That’s my next challenge. To write with the same crazy abandon that I do during November.

So to answer the question, is being a quick writer making me not a good writer? I don’t think it has. It has enabled me to get a first draft down quick, a draft now that has good bones. It’s the next step that I need to get stronger in. To me, being a ‘good writer’ is a more encompassing idea than just getting words down on paper. It is the whole process, from conception to publication and beyond. And as all good writers, I am still growing and learning.