Sunday Salon: Writers, readers, and NaNoWriMo

 

For the second year in a row, I'm publicly saying NO to National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo).


I love to read, and I love to write. Also, I love to write about what I read, otherwise my blog would never have been born. I think there are some truths about life and humanity and why we are the way we are that are best explored through fiction. I think that fiction can help us identify themes in our own lives. I enjoy vicariously experiencing lives that are different from my own, and finding things that make them feel not so different. I respect the creativity and imagination that can invent characters and storylines and situations that capture my mind and my emotions.


One reason that I respect it is that I'm pretty sure I don't have it.


Perhaps one year I’ll consider joining the Write Nonfiction in November Challenge - a NaNoWriMo alternative - because while I love reading fiction, I just don't feel a yearning to produce it; nonfiction writing feels like my niche. Then again, I’m more or less writing nonfiction every time I post here, all year long.


Apparently, I'm not the only one that feels NaNoWriMo isn’t for everyone. Salon.com’s Laura Miller wonders if it should be for anyone:

“The purpose of NaNoWriMo seems laudable enough. Above all, it fosters the habit of writing every single day, the closest thing to a universally prescribed strategy for eventually producing a book. NaNoWriMo spurs aspiring authors to conquer their inner critics and blow past blocks. Only by producing really, really bad first drafts can many writers move on to the practice that results in decent work: revision...‘Make no mistake,’ the organization's website counsels. ‘You will be writing a lot of crap. And that's a good thing. By forcing yourself to write so intensely, you are giving yourself permission to make mistakes. To forgo the endless tweaking and editing and just create.’...

“As someone who doesn't write novels, but does read rather a lot of them, I share (editors’ and agents’) trepidation (over post-NaNoWriMo submissions). Why does giving yourself permission to write a lot of crap so often seem to segue into the insistence that other people read it? Nothing about NaNoWriMo suggests that it's likely to produce more novels I'd want to read. The last thing the world needs is more bad books. But even if every one of these 30-day novelists prudently slipped his or her manuscript into a drawer, all the time, energy and resources that go into the enterprise strike me as misplaced.

“Frankly, there are already more than enough novels out there -- more than those of us who still read novels could ever get around to poking our noses into, even when it's our job to do so...Yet while there's no shortage of good novels out there, there is a shortage of readers for these books. Even authors who achieve what probably seems like Nirvana to the average NaNoWriMo participant -- publication by a major house -- will, for the most part, soon learn this dispiriting truth: Hardly anyone will read their books and next to no one will buy them.”

Discouraged yet? Carolyn Kellogg of the LA Times’ Jacket Copy blog doesn’t think you should be:

“The too-many-writers trope is echoed by people who publish literary journals, who see more submissions than subscriptions, and those in the publishing industry who'd simply like to sell more books. Even if it is true -- which I'm not convinced it is -- there are certainly other factors, including the hundreds of MFA programs in creative writing, that swell the ranks of hopeful writers.

“And is a large pool of hopeful writers really a terrible thing? Are there not thousands more marathon runners than medalists, more home chefs than pros who might ever run a restaurant kitchen? What's wrong with an enthusiastic amateur class of writers? Who says they're not readers, anyway?”

Kellogg goes on to challenge 12 of the statements made in Miller’s piece. Some of her responses struck me as more snark than substance, but I’m with her on this one:

“Miller writes: ‘Rather than squandering our applause on writers -- who, let's face, will keep on pounding the keyboards whether we support them or not -- why not direct more attention, more pep talks, more nonprofit booster groups, more benefit galas and more huzzahs to readers?’
Where on earth does Miller get the idea that the writers participating in NaNoWriMo don't read books? She cites one dinner party anecdote, one Atlantic article referencing an unnamed independent publisher.

“At NaNoWriMo, I checked out the Fictional Character Crushes II forum. Among those setting the writers' hearts a-beating: Sherlock Holmes, both Jay Gatsby and Nick from The Great Gatsby, Mr. Darcy, Aragorn from Lord of the Rings, Anne from Anne of Green Gables, the Cat from the Neil Gaiman short story "The Price," Algernon Moncrieff from Oscar Wilde's "The Importance of Being Earnest," Alcide from the Southern Vampire Mysteries, Edmond Dantès from The Count of Monte Cristo and Archie Goodwin from the Nero Wolfe series by Rex Stout. There are also plenty of crushes on TV and film and anime characters, which just goes to show that these hopeful writers are readers as well as watchers. They are contemporary cultural consumers, and in NaNoWriMo, they're trying to create something. There is no logical basis to portraying the NaNoWriMo hopefuls as non-readers. None at all.”

Dinner-party anecdotes aside, the most consistent piece of writing advice I’ve encountered is “Read.” (And not just books about writing and publishing, either.) While I don’t doubt that there are writers who don’t read much, it’s hard for me to fathom how they could do what they do without being readers as well - it just strikes me as a disconnect. Why would you even want to write fiction if you don’t enjoy reading it? (And frankly, it makes me wonder if their writing just might not be all that good. Yeah, I said it.) I know that many of my favorite writers - of both fiction and nonfiction - are also avid readers who love to talk about what they’re reading and how it inspires them. In that, they’re just like many of my favorite non-writing readers.

I agree with Kellogg that writers and readers are not mutually exclusive groups, but I think Miller has a good point about celebrating readers, too - whether or not they’re also writers. In fact, I think that as book bloggers, that’s one of the things we do - celebrating reading is part of our mission.

What do you think of all this? While we all know the “too many books, too little time” dilemma, do you think there really are too many books and not enough readers? Do you think that writing and reading are connected so that one informs the other?

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After all that discussion of fiction, I’m actually reading nonfiction right now. I’m one of 200 bloggers participating in the Green Books Campaign on Wednesday, and am finishing a surprisingly interesting and timely book for that; next up is a memoir (of sorts) for a blog tour later this month. I’ve read nothing but fiction since late July, and I like to mix it up a little more than that, so I’ve welcomed the break. I’ve got one more nonfiction commitment for this month; after that, I have ARCs and review copies on deck, but none are on a schedule. I think I’ll be ready to slip back into fiction at that point.

What are you reading right now?