: Is NaNoWriMo necessarily a good thing? I'm well on my way to 50k but I feel like my story has not plot and is quite bad. I read somewhere that NaNo is awful for quality of writing.

Vote Up Vote Down

It's important to understand what NaNoWriMo can and can't do.

In a way, NaNoWriMo is all about quantity, and not at all about quality. That's really important, because quantity is something a lot of writers really struggle with - sometimes without even realizing it.

Some of NaNoWriMo's big goals are:

Get yourself into the habit of writing consistently.
Demonstrate to yourself that you're able to write, and write a lot.
Get yourself used to the fact that not all your writing is good, and don't let that block you from writing.
Produce a substantial body of unpolished work, that you can later edit, rework, or rewrite entirely into a much-improved second draft.

These are the goals NaNoWriMo can offer you. If these are areas you want to work on, then NaNoWriMo is a great way to that (and to enjoy a ton of community support and encouragement while you're at it!). If that's not where you're having difficulty, if those aren't areas you want to spend effort to improve, then NaNoWriMo probably isn't the right tool for you.

(0)

Vote Up Vote Down

If you are following the daily wordcount rules, NaNoWriMo is explicitly not about quality. It's about committing to getting stuff on paper so you can work with it.

So many of us start a novel and never finish it, or never start it at all. Being part of the NaNoWriMo sprint gives you a concrete goal and a community to cheer you on.

There is, in fact, nothing wrong with having a crappy first draft. Most first drafts are crap. A first draft which you've written by aiming for a word count is very likely going to be a little extra crappy. This is fine. You now have your words on paper. You can see how your ideas did and didn't work. You have clay to make bricks with. You can throw out whole chapers and rewrite them because you saw how it didn't work the first time.

Stop worrying about "This is bad." Focus on "this is getting finished." You can edit at leisure.

(0)