quillpunk | (Reply)

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i think all of this stuff is absolutely worth thinking about. and i'm really glad that you've found a style of writing that works for you better, as well. i'm not someone who minds editing- my current project is actually doing a full rewrite on a really old story of mine Just Because. so y'know. different strokes for different folks.

i do think even if you're not thinking much about what you're writing, the simple act of Doing The Writing does help you improve to an extent. personally, i think it was specifically writing nanowrimos that helped me learn about Scene Transitions, Pacing, and Keeping The Story Moving. those were things i used to struggle a lot with. and then i had to transition between 150k words worth of scenes across multiple nano novels, lol. and after that, i felt like i could do it. sometimes you just gotta do the thing a bunch to get the hang of it.

i totally agree with chris brecheen's blog post you linked to. although nano is too much too soon for a lot of beginner writers, i think a certain kind of beginner writer can really benefit from nanowrimo's "STOP THINKING" approach. that's beginner writers who are, like, scared to write- people who start things, make grand plans, get really into their own head about it, and quickly abandon their work in disgust because they can't execute on their grand plans, because they just know what they're making is somehow Bad by their standards and don't know what to do about that. i've met multiple people like this. the only way to get past that phase is practice, and they're really struggling with doing that. nanowrimo's "it'll be crap and that's fine!" approach is like tailor-made to smash through these people's mental barriers and make it less scary to keep practicing and experimenting. i feel like these particular people are 90% of the reason nanowrimo exists, honestly. hell, i feel like the people who started nanowrimo were probably like this.

besides those people, though, i think the answer to "why tf should you do nanowrimo?" is basically "just for fun." i mean, yes, it is practice, but there's lots of ways to practice writing and this is like a Nightmare Difficulty level of it. 1667 words a day is a punishing pace to keep up for so long. i think most of the reason for doing it is the sense of participating in a community and the satisfaction of a self-imposed challenge. if you don't get something out of that, then yeah, there's no huge reason to do it.