Monday, December 13, 2010

How Did I Miss This On NaNoWriMo?

I'm 175 posts behind on my blog reader, and close to a month behind on the "Writers" category. That means I'm still reading about National Novel Writing Month, even though this year's event has been over for nearly two weeks. Thus I was fortunate to learn at an old Spectacle post about Laura Miller's Salon column, Better yet, DON'T write that novel, relating to NaNoWriMo. I can't believe I missed it. I go to Salon nearly every day, and I love Laura Miller. Plus I did NaNoWriMo one year. How did this get by me?

Everything Miller says about NaNoWriMo is true. But, you know, it's harmless. When writers are sitting at word processors cranking out the 1500 words or so a day that they have to produce to meet the 50,000 word deadline for the month, they aren't getting into trouble. If lots of them are submitting unrevised crap to publishers and agents, well, I feel for those publishers and agents. But let's face it, having to read a crappy submission letter or the first three pages of a crap-filled manuscript is probably not the worst thing that's going to happen to them.

I also agree with Miller about promoting readers instead of writers. We should have a National Novel Reading Month.

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