So, the Internet Hate Machine is currently raging against Laura Miller's anti-NaNoWriMo essay and Cooks Source magazine.
The latter is far more entertaining, and deserved. (Warning: it's also a rabbit-hole of infinite links if you start following the drama.)
As for Laura Miller's rather petulant article... well, she does have a point. And seeing lots of Speshul Snowflakes cry fat tears of butthurt is always entertaining. But... at the end of the day, nobody is doing any harm by spending a month churning out a crappy attempt at a novel, and I don't see Miller writing essays about people spending a month (or years) watching football or playing WoW every day. More importantly, I think her anecdata about NaNoWriMo participants who never read books is meaningless. So while I can sympathize with all the literary agents who are dreading the coming tide of NaNoWriMo submissions in December, I really cannot see the harm in encouraging more people to write.
No, I am not doing NaNoWriMo. I actually entertained the idea -- not to write a new novel, but to try applying the 50K goal of NaNoWriMo to AQATSA.
That internal editor of mine remains my biggest obstacle to writing more and faster, so maybe churning out 50K words in a month, even if it does need heavy revision, would loosen up the writing juices. But I just can't let my internal editor off the leash.
I've been really struggling with the last couple of chapters -- I've got some plot points that just will not connect, and I fear the entire chapter I just wrote will end up being cut.
So, I'm up to Chapter 10 and 55K words. Which means since my last update, I've been averaging 400 words per day. Which is not terrible, but well short of my 1000 words/day goal. I'm not going to try to push myself to meet NaNoWriMo output, but I am renewing my dedication to spending more BIC time. (Actually, BIC time is not the problem -- being distracted by the internet is. I think the web has given me adult ADD. RSS is the tool of the devil!)
Here's the first 55K words from AQATSA. Yes, I'm going to have to hunt down and kill some "looks," "eyes," "turns," and "knows."
