necia_phoenix | Oct. 13th, 2011

Originally published at Necia Phoenix. You can comment here or there.

So the new site is finally launched, with the usual bugs. hehe It doesn’t really bother me for some reason, I guess that’s because bugs go with the territory when we are talking nano.

To be honest I love nano. I love the energy that spikes among my writer friends. I love seeing the friends from nanos past show up, dust off their writing to go at it, before getting sucked into the mawing black hole of real life.

There is motion, movement. There is a comradeship. Someone who doesn’t do nano, for whatever reason, or doesn’t enjoy the madcapness of it, won’t get it. It moves you on a near spiritual level. It is NaNo and that is all you have to say, people nod gravely.

So what is NaNo?

NaNo is a push to get people writing. To push out 50,000 words in 30 days. Some people love to bitch about how it is all shitty writing… uhm have they ever really looked at a first draft? It is all shitty. That’s what the edits are for. It is to get people to get words down. To get the story from brain to computer/paper. You can go back and fix the mistakes. You can go and tighten prose. Sometimes you have to scrap and redo the whole thing, but knowing you did it to begin with helps when you sit down to try it again.

NaNo is about the first draft. I have friends that prepare months in advance with outlining and what have you. Others dive in with a vauge idea and go from there. I have done both, I find my success rate is higher if I have an outline/planned out scenes.

I finished my first WIP thanks to NaNo. I have participated since ’04, have won about 50/50 of the time, but for me it isn’t about the word count, about the brownie points for hitting 50k (I know I can, no biggie really) but I participate because of the energy, the movement and for the fun of it.

Because for me, NaNo is fun. Someday it might not be, but for now, I’m doing nano and I encourage everyone who is debating it, to give it a try. If you don’t thats ok, just cheer us nutcases on.

Here is a book NaNo For the New and Insane which is a free download, and contains some great advice for new nanoers. Check it out if you are interested in doing nano.