Monday, November 19, 2012

MeNoWriMuInNo by Melissa Clark


This, of course, stands for my own writing practice: Me No Write Much in November. Congrats to all the true NaNoWriMo participants - I applaud your courage and tenacity and especially your ambition to pound out a draft in 30 days. 30 days! I wonder how many novels are born this way, and even more curious: do some people think they can really write a solid, polished novel in this time?

Everything I know about drafting comes from my television writing career where we started with a pitch, moved to the premise, then the beat sheet, outline and first draft. After the first draft came notes, then a second draft, and more notes and a third, and more notes and so on and so on... until there was a polish draft, which still left room for more notes. Often, it would be an entirely different episode from pitch to final draft, just as I find it is from fictional premise to published novel. What a journey this writing process is!

And since I have yet to participate in NaNoWriMo, what is it that you really hope to get out of it? Is it a kick in the tush? a first draft? a taste of what it means to write a novel? I'd love to read your answers in the comments section below. Hey, with 11 more days left, what are you doing reading this? Get back to work!


Melissa Clark is the author of Swimming Upstream, Slowly (1 year 3 months to write), Imperfect (4 years) and just completed her third novel, Bear Witness (3+ years).

8 comments:

  1. Ha! Love this, Melissa. Sooo interesting to get a tiny insight into the TV writing world.

    I think we all need a kick in the tush to get to writing. Deadlines are a great way to really get jump-started! (Even the self-imposed ones...)

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  2. Me No Write Much either, but thanks to this post I found another author that I may just love!

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  3. I've never done NaNo either, but it would be an interesting experiment...I think my manuscript would be riddled with holes and notes in the margins (i.e., research this later!) It would be a brutally rough draft, raised by wolves and filthy as all get-out.

    Also, 4 years for Imperfect (!!!) Wow. Respect to that.

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  4. Cute post, Melissa! This is my second year of NaNoWriMo. I was successful the first time and will be this year. I have a full-time job so I need the "kick in the tush" that NaNoWriMo provides. Once I commit, I know I will meet the challenge. What I expect to get at the end is a very rough partial first draft and a severe case of tendonitis. :)

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  5. Sounds like we all need kicks in the tush!

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  6. You're funny. Looking forward to Bear Witness.
    It takes me a long time too.

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  7. This is my first year doing NaNoWrMo and it has gotten me writing again. I have an end goal and am using every extra second I have to get this novel out of me that I haven't made time for before. These 50,000 words won't be polished, they will be messy and in need of fine tuning, but there will be 50,000 more words to work with than I had before and that, I think, is the point of this month.

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  8. I don't think the point is to get a coherent manuscript out of it but the ability to sit down and write a thousand words or more a day, no matter how crappy they are or if you delete them an hour later. It's the motivation, the skill, and making something resembling a novel to edit that you didn't have 30 days ago.

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