3 Reasons To Quit NaNoWriMo

Finally, I have the free time to take up cliff-diving.

That whooshing noise you just heard? That was the halfway point of the month going past. Which means, for thousands of writers around the world, they’ve either hit their the halfway point of their story or are behind and wallowing in despair.*

If you are one of the latter—or even if you’re not—you might be wondering about the viability of continuing. I have said it before and I’ll say it again: NaNoWriMo is not for everyone. And that’s fine. Don’t get caught up in the hype generated by the NaNoWroMo True Believers. For one thing, they’ve become increasingly crazy as the month has progressed, and are likely to continue down that caffeine-buzzed path for the next two weeks. For another, if they thought it would help their word count, they’d knock you down and suck your brain out through your ear.

Here are some signs that your NaNo experiment is failing:

1. The stress is ruining your love of the book. If the stress of meeting a 50,000 word target is making you hate and/or resent your story, it’s time to stop. You shouldn’t hate what you’re doing. There will be times it’s frustrating or difficult, but consistent hate is probably a sign something you’re doing isn’t working for you. Don’t stop writing, but stop writing to meet someone else’s goal. Make your own instead. If that’s 500 words a day, fine. If it’s 100, that’s fine, too. Just ready yourself for a longer timeline to first draft and beyond.

2. You’re starting to hate writing. Not just your book, but all writing. Even a list brings the Spiky Needles of the Hate God to your brain. Like a more extreme version of number one, this is an indicator that something isn’t working for you anymore. Take a break. Or at least stop complaining on Twitter.

3. You’re lying about what you’re writing. No one likes a liar. Or, if you’re going to lie, at least make up something more interesting than how many words you scored** over the weekend. The problem is not so much the lying but what it indicates: you are more interested in meeting an arbitrary goal than you are in actually writing something. Unlike the above two, stopping writing altogether is not recommended, because, let’s face it, you’d probably just continue to lie. Instead, drop quietly out of NaNoWriMo and just write. Don;t worry about the word count.

Or continue to humblebrag about winning that word war while sobbing and eating icing directly from the can. Whichever.

So, who out there is continuing? Who’s stopping? Who never started and looks down on the rest of us? Leave a comment at the sound of the beep. BEEEEEEEEEEP.

*There are also some who have already finished the requisite 50,000 words, but let’s not speak of them. It only encourages them.

**Words are like heroin, right?