National No Writing Month: Post-Season Wrap Up

101 Reasons has been running for just over a month now, and in that time I've not managed to stop a single bad writer. Instead, almost a billion perfectly innocent words have been combined into many tens of millions of bad sentences, on what would be millions of pages, were any of it fit to print. And they haven't finished counting yet.

The NaNo writers I've interviewed were rather gleeful about contributing to this global shame. So, what have we learned from them?

• Most of the interviewees agreed that their NaNo output is crap. Several were just using the experience as a form of logorrheic exercise, but most were prepared to sift through the crap later, looking for fibre and corn.
• Many also explained how NaNo was just a tool, a framework for focusing on writing - while posting wordcount updates on their blogs, and accepting congratulations when they got their "Winner!" web icon.
• Almost all expressed the opinion that NaNo brought "accountability"; that taking the challenge publicly provided motivation, and the threat of humiliation if you failed. However, the experiences of several interviewees proves that this just doesn't happen.
• Several agreed that "some people shouldn't write", without explaining why they weren't in that category.
• NaNo hasn't yet made enough of a splash in the publishing industry to become truly reviled.

Despite protestations of accountability and focus, it's clear that NaNo's primary function is to make participants excited about writing. It brings a sense of community to what is otherwise a solitary pursuit, and gives participants a platform to discuss their progress, and find validation in the shared goal.

Would that this actually led to better novels.