I know, I know: the only people who hate Nanowrimo and its 30-day long writing frolic are snobs who thing noveling should belong to the few, the proud, the inky. Only bitter mouthed old biddies would piss on the parade by not wanting to be part of the party!
Well, hold still, it’s hard to piss on you when you’re dancing around.
I think that the concept of Nano is a good one: an abbreviated visit to the shores of a distant and undeniably exotic land. And I don’t hate the tourists for coming to my island, buying crappy plastic knickknacks, leaving trash everywhere and banging all the native girls. My problem is that Disney went and bought the island next door, and what was once a cheery if annoying tourist season has become an unbearable slog through carnival rides, gift shops, and $12 hotdogs.
I don’t write for a living, and I doubt I will ever feel comfortable attempting to do so. Auntie Gwen has done the starving artist thing before, and as much as she hates her crap job it is better than the alternative. Now, those of you who do are rock stars, and well deserving of your accolades. Since I don’t use my word juice to pay the rent and put food on the table, many people out there label me a hobbyist and a dilettante, and they are welcome to do so. (And anyone who wants to do so to my face is invited to join me in the Thunderdome. Different rant.)
BUT.
BUT.
During the month of November, every shambling derelict of a human being who can gum a few words (Not the vaunted 50k, but any gathering of squiggles that resembles sentences) becomes a fragment of an army of someday novelists, all suddenly adding their static to the atmosphere in an obsene riot of postapocalyptic scenes as the casual residents of Authorland flee the oncoming hordes.
Perhaps the reason the better armored members of our island don’t like it is because of the sudden competition, or because they see writing as a holy calling defiled by laypersons. Perhaps they see these visitors as an invading force, the united Workaholics, TV Addicts, and Guitar Hero Junkies converging into an Axis of Awful. Perhaps it is part of some code that I, as a lowly Unpublished Whoever, am not allowed to see because I haven’t paid the mothership a jillion dollars and my firstborn child. Perhaps it is something only the elite can know, that only those who have made the financially hilarious decision to live on what dreams I can sell will ever understand.
I just want my Twitter feed to stop being the ALL WORD COUNT ALL THE TIME! feed.
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