mrgan’s magisterial dissection of “cleversimon“‘s unearned snark about this month’s “NaNoWriMo” event:

It’s not that cleversimon is the biggest NaNoWriMo hater, it’s that he’s the first I have an easy way to reply to:

The first fifty thousand words to fall out of your head do not constitute a novel any more than dumping the contents of every jar in your cupboard onto the kitchen floor would constitute a meal.

…but a challenge where you cook at home every day for a whole month would be a very valuable learning experience!

But if “the ONLY thing that matters… is output,” when the focus is “quantity, not quality,” you’re not writing a novel. You’re masturbating. It’s fun, it doesn’t hurt anyone, and a lot of people could stand to do more of it—but it’s not exactly something to brag about, and in the end the only thing you’ve made is a mess.

…but I don’t see any NaNoWriMo participants bragging about it. Sure, you can google around and find some, but there are blowhards and poseurs everywhere, and lumping my NaNoWriting-friends in with them bugs me.

And beware that word “only” in “only thing you’ve made is a mess.” Great things come out of creative messes.

“Write 50,000 words this month, and it’s okay if they suck” is a great idea. Calling the result a novel is asinine.

…but “novel” is a handy, catchy, comprehensible term to slap onto this. Look, no one in their right mind will print out what they have on November 30 and sell it in bookstores. It’s just that working on a “novel” focuses you on generating a lot of output which is still bounded; this aims to prevent nonsense which arises from other quantity-centric exercises, such as stream-of-consciousness writing. Those may produce interesting insights and connections, but they also result in a lot of filler garbage: “Here I am writing again blah blah this is so silly.” Aiming for a novel is something most people will never do otherwise. Let them fight this ridiculous overreach! Where’s the adventure in taking on the feasible? Where the challenge in drawing only when you feel like it? (i.e. very infrequently, if you’re a busy adult.)

There’s no need to get negative about the efforts of many smart, nice people on the very first day they roll up their sleeves. They’re taking on something demanding, new, fun, and entirely victimless. They’re the 9-year-old with a skateboard and visions of Tony Hawk, the high-school sophomore with a programming book and a sketching app all worked out in his head, the girl with a guitar from Target and tabs to ‘Sweet Jane’ she downloaded online. There’s neither victory nor samaritanism in telling them they’ll fail.

struck a raw nerve with the target:

cleversimon:

Do the words you spend attacking me for things I never said and refuting points I never made count towards the 50,000? Or are they more of a side-project deal?

Anyway. Watching you project your own insecurities on the blank canvas of my little semantic quibble has been illuminating. Keep it up.

You keep being classy, cleversimon.