Episode 012: November is NaNoWriNo. December is UhOhWriLess.
NaNoWriMo is a month-long event in which writers of all experience levels attempt to write a 50,000 word novel during the month of November. Sounds good, right? There is a sense of accomplishment for accomplishment’s sake with vomiting so many words, with setting and meeting a goal. However, I’m not so couch-therapy optimistic about it.
Send any comments on this episode, or any writing and publishing related questions to caleb [at] calebjross.com. I will answer them in a future episode.
Show Notes and Mentions
- National Novel Writing Month official website
- Follow comedian Doug Wilson at @idigthedoug
Hey mate,
Nice podcast (though you better not’ve been talking about me with that “writers who put out a novella every few months of dubious quality etc etc” because if you were I’ll go Daniel Plainview on you, man, “One day, I’m going to come into you home while you’re asleep and I’m going to cut your throat”)
Anyway–have an honest point, though not even bugging you this time:
Now, you and I do have, I’d say, “opposite side of the coin” philosophies on a lot of things, but I think are very much like each other. In this podcast, you bring up the idea that “too many writers would dilute the talent pool” or words to that effect, that if everyone is writing and publishing there may be detrimental effects on writers who do have “the talent” and, so to speak, are deserving of attention.
But elsewhere, especially implicitly, and even in this podcast a bit, you have seemed to subscribe to the idea that with writing and pubbing its kind of “the best rise to the top” sort of thing–if someone is successful (largely) there is a reason having to do with talent, not just filling a particular market niche (we’re not talking about the LCD, here, but proper writing).
So, don’t you think that this sudden influx of “everyone is a writer and there are only so many readers” would actually be a fundamentally positive thing in terms of truly good stuff rising and being noticed–I mean, if there is a mess of shit in your backyard but there’s a beautiful bauble floating in it, despite the shit you’re going to notice that beautiful thing–I’d say there’s even more draw to it than if your backyard was just your backyard, because in that case you’d simply be comfortable, content to look at what you’ve always looked at and find pleasing in a general way, and a rarity, a beauty, might just be overlooked because, in general, you have a decent lawn.
Haha, take that metaphor.
If it’s a “talent rises to the top” scenario (if one cares about the top and I do think–not in a bad way–you do and in a kind of traditional way) the more things to temper the talent, the better.
You spoke even of motivation in this podcast–if someone is a real writer, you know, they know they are good and they see an ocean of just mediocrity and know they could get swallowed in it, shouldn’t the lesson be “motivate from this, don’t be caught in that slurry” use the, so to speak, lowering standards of a lot of people to raise your own–it’s not enough to be “okay” or be “pretty good”–it’s now necessity to be unique, to be distinct, to be better and more defined.
blah blah blah.
I kind of–side point–bring this up because you feel this way about NaNoWriMo (did I get that right? too lazy to check) while I (not violently) share a lot of the same thoughts but aim them at workshopping, and peer groups, at collectives, at intensives with this or that author, at “advanced classes” and advice-sharing-personal-experience groups etc. etc. Do you see an overlap?
I promise, I absolutely did not have you in mind when I made those novella comments. I’ll email you who I was talking about. Rest assured, I dig your work greatly.
I suppose my main point was not so much that the talent pool would be diluted, but the audience for work from talented writers may become smaller. I know that if I were not a reader, and I picked up a terribly written book, I may then be turned off of reading anything else. And as untalented writers continue to write, and continue to publish and promote their own work (even just to friends and family) my fear is that they are doing a disservice to those who would like to grow the reading pool. Maybe that’s too close-minded, and the Cream to the Top analogy will still correct things.
And to your point: “You spoke even of motivation in this podcast–if someone is a real writer, you know, they know they are good and they see an ocean of just mediocrity and know they could get swallowed in it, shouldn’t the lesson be “motivate from this, don’t be caught in that slurry” use the, so to speak, lowering standards of a lot of people to raise your own–it’s not enough to be “okay” or be “pretty good”–it’s now necessity to be unique, to be distinct, to be better and more defined” yes, this is true, except that the central problem is that some writers may have a false sense of genius, of producing that unique, distinct, better defined work.
Am I being too narrow-minded? Yeah, probably.