A novel a month?

Well, it’s November again. Halloween is done Thanksgiving is on the way (Pause here, folks, and contemplate what you have to be thankful for. The odds are there’s a good deal going right, even if there’s some negatives out there.) and a plethora of various religious celebrations are eight around the corner. Some of my fellow writers, well, okay, a LOT of my fellow writers are once again trying to crank out a novel in the month of November for NaNoWriMo. National Novel Writing Month, I believe, is the proper title.

It’s a neat concept, though I’ve never actually formally tried my luck with it. The idea is to write a complete novel length work (I believe it’s supposed to be a minimum of 50,000 words) or a significant portion of a novel starting on the first of the month and ending on the 30th, before Midnight. Neat idea, and I know a few people who are extremely pleased with themselves for finishing at or near that goal. A few even exceed that goal and their own expectations.

I have, for the record, bettered that number on several occasions. Believe me, deadlines are great motivators, especially when there are bills to pay.

Which brings me to my subject du jour. Recently I ran across yet another post that declared the horror genre as a dead beast that simply hasn’t realized it’s dead. I’ve heard the same for damned near every genre out there, to say nothing of the publishing industry.

Garbage, says I. First, I started hearing that horror was dead around the same time I started getting serious about writing. According to the people who seem to know everything—at least according to themselves in many cases—Horror should have been buried, resurrected and buried again half a dozen times by now.

Second, I often find that the people making these proclamations tend to be having trouble selling their own works. Not all of them by any doubt, but a decent number. Seems it must be the industry and not their writing skills that is suffering. Does that sound harsh? Probably, but I’ll stick with it just the same. If even half of the doomsayers were right, there would be no publishing industry.

But Jim, what about how book sales are down?

Yeah. So is real estate, medicine, insurance sales and bloody near everything but the numbers on booze, guns and prostitutes. It’s called a recession and while it is getting better, it hasn’t gone away yet.

What about technology? There’s these Kindle things from Amazon and a few dozen others.

Yep. Technology is wreaking havoc. Sooner or later books will become obsolete as digital readers of all kinds come along to take their place. Not in my lifetime, mind you, but it probably will happen. We can see it occurring already when it comes to the size of print runs and the growing number of digital downloads. Heck, I do half of my research online. Of course, I still write books, too, despite numerous programs. You sort of need to change with the times. If my publishers decided somewhere down the line that they need to publish digital copies I’m just fine with that, so long as I get my piece of the pie.

That mentality is the cause of most literary woes, by the way. The debate got into a little mudslinging and accusations that midlist writers, especially those who demand money for their efforts, are crushing the industry, primarily because they are writing too much stuff that doesn’t appeal to their fans. They are “phoning it in.” For the writers who are making a living as writers, apparently, do not care about the quality of their stories as long as they are published. Making money is destroying the quality of the work.

Sounds as stupid to me now as it did when I read it the first time around. What? Cooks stop knowing how to make soup when they become chefs? Artists stop producing art when they get paid as illustrators? As I said then I will say now, the business of writing should not be confused with writing. They are related, yes, but distantly. The same is true of any creative endeavor and the decision to try to make a living with it. I write a novel and then I sell it. Or, for a twist, I write sample chapters and an outline and then I sell it. Beyond the selling of the manuscript or proposal, the two have little in common.

Which brings me back to NaNoWriMo. If you decide to try your luck with this, more power to you. If you opt to follow the same principle but missed the November first deadline, my answer is the same. The purpose here is not to win a valuable cash prize. To my knowledge none of the prizes offered have anything to do with cash. No, the idea is to challenge yourself and see if you can do it. If you can, in fact, put forth the effort necessary to hammer out 50,000 words in 30 days. That’s almost 2,000 words per day and that’s not a small investment in time. Hell, I’ll do you one better, that’s like working a second job. You’ll work hard if you decide to try this and you’re remotely serious in your efforts.

And I wish you the very best of luck. I’ve managed that sort of rate for most of my career. I know a lot of professional writers who can’t manage that sort of word count per day. Doesn’t mean they aren’t excellent writers, just means they don’t work at the same speed.

But you should try it, just once at least, just to see if you can do it. Why? For the same reason you decide to submit the first time you’re done with a story you like a lot. To see if it can be done.

James A. Moore