I am extremely not a fan of NaNoWriMo. You're outlining exactly what's wrong with it - "if I vomit words on a page I will have a book." And you're outlining exactly why it's wrong - "is this real life?" If you folded a thousand paper cranes, at least you'd have a thousand paper cranes when you were done. You could put them on a wall and people would go "cool! A thousand paper cranes! That must have been a lot of work!" If you knitted a blanket, you could wrap yourself up in it and go "and now I have something to keep myself warm." More importantly, if that blanket started to look like ass you'd go "hmm. I should probably start the last eight rows over because this thing is starting to look like a fishing net." But with NanoWriMo it's always about "oh god don't revise or else you'll never make it to our arbitrary goal!" Thing of it is? You're either going to know better than to subject your friends to your "novel" or you're going to make things awkward. Either way, nobody is going to enjoy it. And here you are, putting the weight of the world on a ridiculous word-vomit draft that has nothing whatsoever to do with your core competencies, because everyone is doing it. Has it ever struck you as weird that there's no "national novel reading month?"
Only backward countries would do such a thing. It's advertised in all schools and libraries, fairly popular at that. It's the fifth* year when November is our national reading month. While it lasts you get access to free books and audiobooks and is sponsored by our Ministry of Culture. * - I initially wrote 'second', but was mistaken. It started in 2013Has it ever struck you as weird that there's no "national novel reading month?"
You've managed to turn "extremely not a fan" into an understatement. Here's an idea. Stop writing. Don't allow yourself to write anything for the next 30 days, not even notes in the notebook (well, maybe... but only when you feel like it). Keep telling yourself it's tedious and just too big of a job to start now, and that you'll definitely start once you feel like really writing. Start fantasizing about the things you could be writing about -- all those great stories, and all those particularly spectacular moments that express the characters perfectly and drive the plot in the most natural way... The people you describe in that quote? That's me. And this is my opportunity to finish something. Is it going to be shit? I don't think so; that's not the way I write things. I'm not even sure it's going to be -- but in the end, at least I know I gave it a decent effort. Besides. Nobody's saying I should stop at the end of November, or that I can't edit it further.NaNyNaNyNooNoo is the worst piece of shit waste of time I have ever encountered.
I find that it is largely entertained by people without the stamina to finish anything
I do not believe there was ever a time where I was inspired to write all those particularly spectacular moments down in a notebook. Writing has always been this spiteful thing I do better than other people to make them STFU. Eventually it became this thing people thought I could do for money, then it became this thing people paid me to do. I haven't written in eight months. I've been waiting to hear back from my agent, and it's been ridiculous just getting her a goddamn draft. I'll say this - as someone who has always been externally motivated to write, y'all are fucking insane if you really think that if you want it bad enough you'll get it. Or, more importantly, that if you arrange your life in this way or that you'll accomplish something you wouldn't accomplish otherwise. Write for an audience. Write to respect their time. Write in a way that they want to read it. Write to put your ideas in their head. Write for as long as it takes, for as long as you're productive, then stop. Because - and here's the bitch of it - if you are dependent on contrived deadlines and forces to get you to write, you will never truly write. I once wrote 15,000 words of a screenplay on a flight from Japan to San Francisco. It got me signed to William Morris. But hey - I know a guy who once wrote a 20,000 word screenplay in 2 days because he showed 5 loglines to a prospective agent and she asked to read the one he hadn't written. You can keep going. You can edit it further. You can do all these things. But good god, man. If you have any respect for yourself don't swaddle your craft in a smothering blanket of metooism.
Where do you find the stuff you read? What do you like about it? Figure out how those outlets get their material. If it's magazines, they probably accept submissions. If it's novels, they probably have agents. If it's online fanfic, it's the crud that floated to the surface. WRITE THAT. Write to that length, write to satisfy that itch, and write as if you were trading vital only-get-it-once lifeforce for the act of writing it. Because you are. If there is anything you would rather be doing than writing, do that instead. Because it's not an obligation that you cream through 50,000 pages a month once a year. It's that thing that you do better than anybody you know, and that gives you a feeling unlike any other.
I've definitely realized I've never really been interested in reading someone else's Nanowrimo writing. I just try to be polite, it's still a huge accomplishment to finish that much writing at once. But my writing is fucking great, suck my dick.