NaNoWriMo!

[dizzy]

If you could, that would be awesome, but can you? If you take the leap and try it, I'll applaud you, even if you fall short. If you do it and make it, I'll be impressed, because 1500 to 2000 words a day is all I can usually make unless I chain myself to my computer. If you don't do it and just keep saying that you probably could, I'll continue to roll my eyes. Talk is cheap, you know?

Any fool can write 100,000 words a month, provided that they are literate, don't care about the quality of their material, and have a means of recording their words. There's *nothing* astonishing about it. 

Don't believe me? Try checking out fanfiction.net or just peruse this wikipedia article:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Hamilton_%28writer%29

[Ms.Perception]

Hey not everything on fanfiction.net is total crap.  I mean most of it is but people have to get their feet wet somewhere.

[laeshanin]

They most certainly do, and as a past writer of fanfiction (no slash, though), I can tell you it's a good way to start honing your craft. Some is shite, some, on the other hand, is better written than some of the so-called books that are published with regard to whichever show/film they represent... And a few fan writers have made it to the big time. True they aren't developing their own characters, but in other areas of pure entertainment and meeting the need of the public to devour some sort of material that incorporates their favourite characters, they do just fine.

As for writing at that kind of clip, I can only claim to have ever managed a thousand. Any more than that and I'd be screaming to go back and edit. It's then I'd get pedantic... 

[rohina]

Any fool can write 100,000 words a month, provided that they are literate, don't care about the quality of their material, and have a means of recording their words. There's *nothing* astonishing about it. 

And yet, some of the best novels in English are really quite short - nothing like 100,000 words. Size isn't everything.

[Hook]

And yet, some of the best novels in English are really quite short - nothing like 100,000 words.

I'm glad you're finally agreeing with dizzy-two.

Size isn't everything.

That ain't what *I* hoid!  <groucho mode off>

Hook

[Renatus]

ided that they are literate, don't care about the quality of their material, and have a means of recording their words. There's *nothing* astonishing about it. 

So... can you? It's easy to point at an archive of bad writing and say that since those people did it, anyone can, but it's also essentially meaningless - even though their writing may be really, really horrible (I wouldn't know, I don't read fanfic and now stay the hell away from slushpiles), they still have a certain level of dedication and discipline to have sat down and written that much. If you haven't done it yourself, you have no basis for saying that it is easy.

If it was ever-so easy to sit down and shit out a story in a month, NaNoWriMo wouldn't exist as no one would even think about the process being difficult or unusual. You also seem to be missing a large part of the point of it and are getting stuck on the 'quantity over quality' tagline. The reason that tagline is there is because it is all too common for writers to sit and fuss and fuss and fuss over the beginnings of stories, with the end result being that they've spent weeks crafting one paragraph. That's pretty pointless. I've personally experienced it myself that when I stopped fussing about everything coming out perfect all at once, I actually got something done that I can go back and continue working on and polishing. It's kind of like carving - you have to rough out the initial shape before you can start defining the details.

[dizzy]

I can and I have. It's easy and trivial. Now, of course, you wouldn't expect your rough drafts to be published. That's what editors are for. 

It's also easy to bluntly label anything you haven't read as "slushpiles" or whatever. I read anything and everything that I can find. That's what good writers are willing to do. All in all, it's not so much your ability to output words that's in question so much as your ability to input things other people have suggested into your imagination.

[Renatus]

I can and I have. It's easy and trivial.

Then that is awesome. You have my congrats.

Now, of course, you wouldn't expect your rough drafts to be published. That's what editors are for. 

Of course not. That's also what polishing a manuscript until it's reflective before it ever gets to an editor is for.

It's also easy to bluntly label anything you haven't read as "slushpiles" or whatever. I read anything and everything that I can find. That's what good writers are willing to do. All in all, it's not so much your ability to output words that's in question so much as your ability to input things other people have suggested into your imagination.

When I mentioned slushpiles, I was talking about actual slushpiles - things submitted for publication in some form (in my case, it was for Elfwood and Woodworks some years ago). I have not the time, inclination, or patience to do it again; working as editor for one friend's comic and doing serious beta reading for another is as far as I'm willing to go any more. I have my own things to write and books to read, and I do not think I am missing out. Fanfic is included in this, but for different reasons; I am generally not interested in what other people think should have happened in someone else's imaginary world. Compound this with my partial hermitage from popular culture (don't watch tv, watch very few movies, low interest in anime and most comics), and one could say I have an interest level that is a number approaching zero.

I read the back of cereal boxes when I eat breakfast in the morning and have since I started reading. So what? After a point - working full time and supporting myself was what did it for me, although now it's maintaining 6 hours of class a day, a marriage, and a household - I've lacked the time to read everything for the sake of reading it. I have to be choosy, I no longer have the free time to read a book a day. I spent plenty of time slogging my way through crap I wanted to throw against the wall as a kid to get a good idea of what doesn't work and I'd rather read things I enjoy now that my time is far more limited.

I find it doubly important that I be choosy now that I am trying to write seriously - one is what one reads, and I find that when I read silly, fluffy, stupid stories, my writing comes quickly... and is silly, lightweight, and stupid. On that note, I have to limit how many classics I read in a month or I start writing prose that is painfully purple. Dickens is the worst for this - you might think that I am wordy now...

It's like chocolate. It's important to sample a variety to know what is good (or simply to one's taste)  and what is bad (or not to one's taste), but life is too short to waste on indiscriminately eating the bad stuff, no matter how cheap it is.

[dmchess]

NaNoWriMo rules OK!   (And I prefer "A good writer can do that upside-down".  )

I'm planning to do my fourth NaNoWriMo novel ("novel") this year (although not my fourth in a row; I skipped 2003.  In case anyone's run out of cereal boxes to read, here's my link: http://www.davidchess.com/nanowrimo_foyer.html.

NaNoWriMo has a very freeing feel; being able to write without any expectations at all is great.  Not something one'd probably want to do all the time, but once a year it seems like very good exercise...

DC