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I'd like to take this time to offer my regrets for the visual assault that was yesterday's collage. Some viewers reported headaches; one even complained of vertigo. I have learned my lesson and shall be more restrained and tasteful in future paper pursuits.
That out of the way, it's time to address a controversy lurking in certain unlit corners of the typosphere (actually, I am pretty sure that lighting hasn't been installed in any corner of the typosphere, due to low population density) and that is the controversy of Whether or Not Nanowrimo Is For Loser Hacks And Should Be Frowned Upon By Real Writers. Let me be clear as to where I stand: Nanowrimo drafts are written the same way as was Crime and Punishment: one word at a time ("I put my pants on just like the rest of you -- one leg at a time. Except, once my pants are on, I make gold records.").
What's more, the bitter truth is, it's likely that there is a Nano draft out there, written in 30 days, better than anything you or I could produce in all the days of our lives. Talent, she's a bitch.
I concede that 30 days does not a finished product make, but it's a start, and really it's a writer's talent or lack thereof that makes a work of art. Countless writers of genre fiction turn out published manuscripts probably no better, on average, than your typical steaming Nano pile of 50,000 words come December 1st.
Writers, let the audience be your judge-- not, god forbid, your fellow writers.
Typewriter porn
3 hours ago
5 comments:
OK, I'm trying -- trying mind you -- to be adult and good, and not petulant and whiney, and I'm having a hard time with that, which makes me more petulant, and can probably all be attributed to reintroducing caffeine into my diet for a month. Anyhow...
I clearly don't get the negativity. The Internet is rife with stupid, silly ideas, and even the NaNo folks have owned up to the fact that stringing together 50,000 words in 30 days is probably not the sanest activity one can pursue. But hey, so what? I'll tell you so what. Being the closet paranoid that I am, I know that NaNoWriMo has secret messages implanted in the site.
Disregard the noise from the participants who really have published their NaNovels, and from the write-for-a-living-authors who play along each year. Ignore all the stuff about getting kids excited about writing (no mean feat!) or the pep talks and all that other stuff. What NaNoWriMo is really about is... mind control.
Oh yeah, you know it. Tune your tinfoil hats in the direction of their website, and you'll hear it, too. The Ominous Messages being pumped into our skulls by Chris Baty and his zombie army of Kool-Aid-swilling sycophants...
* Write a little every day!
* Don't be afraid to fail!
* You can't create if you don't try!
* A diet of leftover Halloween candy is satisfying and nutritionally complete!
It's all there, people, a wicked little palimpsest of eeeeevil, woven in among the rah-rah-rah encouragement in the forums and all that silly talk about charitable donations. It's there, I tell you! And worse news yet...
...I'm one of Them...
*evil cackle*
*lightning flash*
For the record, I found yesterdays collage pleasing... But I wasn't wearing tinfoil for protection.
Writers, let the audience be your judge-- not, god forbid, your fellow writers.
This is, I think, the bottom line.
There's also something very sad about putting people down for writing simply for the fun and challenge of it all. God forbid!
Besides, as G.K. Chesterton said in one of my very favorite Chesterton quotes, "Anything worth doing is worth doing badly." That goes for music, writing, art, and any number of other things, in my opinion.
I'm with Elizabeth on this one.
I do NaNoWriMo because: it's fun.
Granted, I could spend November doing lots of other, more socially acceptable activities: watching television, recording television shows on my DVR to watch later, discussing television shows with other people who have watched the same television shows, reading blogs about my favorite television characters, etc.
But instead I write stuff. Because it's fun.
It seems several of us were fired up and writing about NaNo yesterday. Well, my opinions on the subject are all over the place by now, so I don't think I need to rehash them here. Suffice to say: NaNoNaySayers can blow it out their a**. Maybe instead of whining about amateurs getting their word on, they ought to be doing something more productive. Like, I dunno, writing a book.
I'm glad you cleared the air about that collage. I had assumed I was having another acid flashback.
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