NaNoWriMo
I posted last year about a letter I sent to Laura Miller in response to her Salon.com op ed piece where she (in my opinion) blasted the participants of NaNoWriMo and attacked the Office of Letters and Light. (NaNoWriMo’s parent company). This is her response to me. I have yet to send one back. In other news, Salon.com has put itself up for sale.
Hello,
Thanks for writing. I think in your anticipation of being slapped down, you leap to some unjustified conclusions about what I said.
Although I hoped to respond to every email I received about my NaNoWriMo piece, it turns out I just can’t scrape together the time, so I’m going to attach a comprehensive response that I hope will address your remarks, whether positive or negative. (The email I got was about half and half, by the way, and I’m not any happier about the positive ones that willfully misinterpret what I said than I am about the negative ones.)
Here is what I did NOT say:
I did NOT say that *writing a NaNoWriMo novel* is a waste of time.
I did NOT object to people writing novels, whether they do it in 30 days or more.
I did NOT say that NaNoWriMo novels are “a lot of crap.”
I did NOT say that NaNoWriMo contestants do not read.
How can the above statements possibly be true? I think if you go back and pay attention to what I actually wrote instead of what you assumed I wrote or what other people told you I wrote, you will see that it is so. (Yes, the headline for the piece is not as clear as it could be, but like most journalists, I do not determine the headlines attached to my articles. That’s up to the cover editor.)
To elaborate:
My complaint is not with anyone who writes any kind of novel. Let me repeat: I have no objection to anyone writing a novel in 30 (or more) days, any more than I object to people making scrapbooks or perfecting their gelato recipe or doing anything else that satisfies their creative impulses and it makes them happy.
My complaint is with the investment of public time, energy and money in a program that promotes novel-writing. The *apparatus* of NaNoWriMo — nonprofit status, fundraising ($300K+ this year, according to the website), paid staff, volunteers, website, press campaigns — strike me as squandered. For the same reason, I would also call it a waste for someone to solicit donations for a nonprofit organization urging more people to knit or play championship Scrabble. These are harmless and agreeable pastimes, it’s true, but do we really need to invest scarce resources in boosting them?
I DO put the event in the context of a culture where 81% of people say they plan to write a book (reported by the New York Times) yet only 57% report having read a SINGLE book for pleasure . . . → Read More: A Response From Laura Miller
sending...