No No NaNo

Almost everyone I know is doing National Novel Writing Month. It seems odd to me, perhaps because even if my life depended on it, I couldn’t write 50,000 words in a month. In six months, perhaps, but even that is stretching it. Where do all those words come from? If writers have such a well of words in them, why haven’t they been pouring out all year?

And why the push to write a novel? I could understand if all those thousands of people were setting November aside for something important — volunteer work in free clinics, perhaps. But a novel? The world is already awash in novels that don’t sell. Almost two million novels are written every year. Every single year. Two hundred thousand are published (which means that at any given moment, two million books might be on the market) and half of those are self-published. Seventy percent of all published novels sell less than 500 copies. Eighty-five percent sell less than 1000 copies. Sure, a few people who do NaNoWriMo manage to get their novel published, but if they needed NaNoWriMo to give them the impetus, what kind of writer are they?

Perhaps it’s the challenge. I do understand challenge, but like Gregory Peck in The Big Country, I prefer to keep my challenges private.

But still, for whatever reason, people by the thousands are churning out words by the thousands. I planned on writing this month, but I’ve never have liked going along with the crowd. I know a clinic that needs help. You can find me there.