NaNoWriMo? No! NaNoReViSoMo? Yes!

I swear I'm not having a stroke!

Today has the dubious distinction of being a double holiday. On the one hand, it’s Halloween, a bittersweet day because it’s the culmination of spooky season, which in my house spans from September 1st to October 31st and involves watching horror films on movie night, prioritizing spooky television series,¹ and just generally freaking myself out.²

On the other hand, it’s NaNoWriMo Eve.

November 1 marks the start of National Novel Writing Month (or NaNoWriMo, pronounced nano-RYE-moe), a free writing challenge that asks writers to pledge to writing 50,000 words by November 30. That’s 1,667 words per day. Purists say a NaNo novel should be a first draft of a new-to-you book rather than 50,000 added to a work in progress, and writers should strive to write through to the end by the end of those 50,000 words—the working thesis is that getting to the end fast is more important than fleshing things out.

Fans say NaNoWriMo’s ludicrously ambitious task can be hugely motivating while critics say it raises false hopes only to leave you with a steaming pile of poo to clean come December 1.

I say they’re both right.

To the critics: Yes, trying to write a novel in a month will leave most writers with steaming piles of poo, but then, Anne Lamott did call first efforts “shitty first drafts” for a reason.³

To the fans: There really is nothing quite like the push of an impossible deadline and the fellowship of the hundreds of thousands of writers in the NaNoWriMo community who have strapped themselves to the same stupid rocket ship as you.⁴

As for me, I’ve found the short container a great way to allow myself to explore a new idea to see if it’s a project I want to commit to long term. I wrote about just that in an article about my inaugural NaNoWriMo experience in 2012 here:

How I Spent My Nano Vacation

But as exhilarating as it was to come to November 30 with a finished draft the two times I managed it, there have been other years that went far less swimmingly.

Years I crashed and burned in the first week.

Years I tried to hitch the wagon of an existing project to the NaNoWriMo’s star only to find it impossible to channel the requisite combination of enthusiasm and blissful ignorance that fueled my progress for brand new ideas.

Years I tried to start a revision on November 1 even though revision energy is measured and thoughtful whereas drafting energy—especially the drafting energy needed to power through a traditional NaNoWriMo project—is more elementary-student-on-a-post-trick-or-treat-sugar-rush.

Last year, I tried to work on the half-done draft of the novel I’m currently revising, and it went so disastrously (read: I was trying to count words when I hit a dead end that forced me to cut all the words I’d written during November and then some) that I left a wry plea for someone in the Slack group full of fellow Wrimos-in-spirit—defined here as anyone embracing a push goal for November whether it fit the traditional NaNoWriMo rubric or not—to remind me not to get myself into the same mess this year.

But writerly amnesia is a powerful thing—how else can you explain how writers get to the end of a book they sweat through only to declare they’re starting a fresh hell new one?—and after a Slack post asking who’s in for NaNo next month, I wrote:

I'm going to do it as NoNoReMo (Revising instead of writing). Never mind that I've never had success doing NaNo as a revision blast. This time's different, I can feel it! My plan is to spend the first third of my writing time on the beginning that's got me in knots and then the rest on chugging through part two that needs revision but feels straightforward. This is either a genius plan to get my writerly engine to stop idling on the opening or  batshit magical thinking. I’ll let you know which on November 30. Or, you know, November 3. LOL

That afternoon, my friend Evelyn slid a message into my inbox with the following subject line:

Can someone remind me next year that a word count nano only works for me for a bright and shiny new idea?

Well played, past self and Evelyn. Well played.

And yet.

I’m looking at the revision I have before me, and I can see how this year might truly be different.⁵ I have a detailed revision plan, one section that won’t require a ton of heavy lifting but will need a lot of cutting and polishing—aka a good place to rack up words by adding each revised chapter to the new draft as I finish them—and a second section that will need a bit more time to bake.

And by a bit more time to bake, I mean that’s the foggy section I mentioned in Marjan Kamali’s Deep Patience tenacity tale last week. I know I need to keep working through that fog, but I also know that flailing in that fog for too long can be utterly demoralizing, so my plan is to spend a third of my writing time on the foggy bits and two thirds of my writing time on the comparatively well-lit bits. That means I’m striving for 30,000 words revised this month—revision takes more energy than drafting for me, so that feels doable—as well as a number of hours that’s so high it’s scarier than all the movies I’ve watched this spooky season combined.

But if spooky season 2023 has taught me anything it’s this:

1. Screaming through the woods with a killer in hot pursuit can be very motivating⁶, and

2. Someone has to be the final girl, so why not me?⁷

So what about you? Are you tackling NaNoWriMo this year? If so, are you doing a traditional novel in a month, or are you going rogue like me? I know a few writers who are harnessing the spirit of NaNoWriMo to commit to an hour a day. Is there some project you’d like to commit to this month?

1. Guillermo Del Toro’s Cabinet of Curiosities anthology series wasn’t the high point I was hoping it would be, but “The Murmuring” (episode 8) takes my best of the season prize, an arbitrary distinction that’s basically what I liked best from the ragtag collection of content we happened to watch. No horror movie has yet dethroned The Babadook as my all time favorite, but we didn’t re-watch that this year. Re-watches this year included The Exorcist (not as scary as it was when I watched it as a teenager in a friend’s basement on a couch turned backwards so we could duck and put the back of the couch between us and the demonic shenanigans on the screen) and Tucker & Dale vs Evil (a comedy horror film that was just as funny as it was the first time I watched it, though if you don’t giggle at the trailer, this is NOT the film for you.) Next year, though The Babadook!

2. Sunday night, for example, the pupster needed to go out in the middle of the pilot for the exceptionally creepy Spanish horror series, 30 Coins. As I’m trying to walk a pooch more interested in sniffing than doing her business, I was staring at our shadows, mine long as a Tim Burton skeletal creature, hers squat, and this other one sporting a hat shaped like the one worn by old priest from The Exorcist, and then the man generating said third shadow was sneaking around me on my left, and every cell in my body screamed, and then I was screaming and jumping so firmly away that the puppy thought were were playing and started doing that jump and twist thing and this poor guy is laughing nervously, and I’m apologizing and trying to explain I saw his shadow before I saw him and we had just paused a horror show, but he just scurried past me as well he should.

3. We’ve all read Bird by Bird, right? If you haven’t read it yet, go find it now!

4. Connect with the NaNoWriMo community here.

5. Yes, yes, yes. The definition of insanity is blah, blah, blah…

6. In this scenario the screaming runner is writer me and the killer is my time goal.

7. I am of the firm opinion that the best horror ends with some level of hope. This modern movement to end horror films with evil unequivocally triumphant can take a flying leap off a foggy bridge—come at me, ghoulies!