Review – No Plot? No Problem!
Chris Baty's Light-Hearted Guide to Writing a NaNoWriMo Novel
Oct 18, 2009
Every year in November, increasing numbers of writers take the National Novel Month challenge to write a 50,000 word novel in 30 days. This feat requires writing on average 1,667 words per day, even on Thanksgiving. Somewhere around 10-29% of the participants "win", or reach 50,000 words by the end of November.
In 2004, the founder Chris Baty published a guide to the NaNoWriMo event, No Plot? No Problem! The title encapsulates the spirit of the challenge: the novel must be written, but it need not be good or even, necessarily, encumbered by a plot. This, of course, directly contradicts everything any writer was ever taught in literature class.
Anyone Considering National Novel Writing Month can use No Plot? No Problem!
Chris Baty's book is a guide to jump-starting the writing process for a hastily-penned novel. With so much to accomplish in such a short time, usually worked in around a full-time job and Thanksgiving celebrations, the odds against writing a novel in a month seem to be stacked up high.
The short book explains that the only way to succeed at NaNoWriMo is to let go of the "inner editor" and let the story pour out any way it will. These inner editors tell the writer than his work is no good, that he needs to fix all the grammatical errors there and then, and generally gets in the way.
The author provides hints on how to make that unhelpful voice go away, right down to suggesting an imaginary conversation with the editor where the writer promises that he or she can come back and edit the book later in, say, January.
Writing for NaNoWriMo is not Subject to Conventional Novel Writing Wisdom
The first section of the book concentrates on how to create time to write, techniques for writing without the need to be "good" and ways to "cheat" (in actual fact, "cheating" to pad out the word count is a feature of the challenge as it tends to sideline the inner editor).
The next few chapters then take each of the four weeks of the challenge and describe what the writer is likely to feel, when the slumps might come, and what to do about them. They are designed to be read alongside the writing as an accompanying pep talk, and help the NaNoWriMo author recognize what is happening.
No Plot? No Problem! is an Essential Tool for the Novel Writing Experience
Real-life NaNoWriMo communities meet in coffee shops during November, and the community chats on forums all month long. But for those who are facing the challenge for the first time, Chris Baty's book is an essential tool, amusing, chatty, and a little like having a friend along for the ride.
Readers may also be interested in articles about the background of National Novel Writing Month and techniques for bolstering NaNoWriMo word counts.
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