We’re getting dangerously close to November, and NaNoWriMo, when many people will try and write a book in a month. It works for some people. There are many experienced writers who use it to create a space for doing the first draft, and there are books that get published as a result. I’ve never done it, and I wouldn’t. It troubles me that the whole process gives participants, and those seeing it happen, a really distorted view of what it means to write a book.

It is possible to write enough words for a full length novel in a month. A novel is generally understood to be more like 75,000 words and up, not the 50,000 you need for NaNoWriMo. 50,000 words in 30 days means about 1700 words a day. That’s not a lot – two blog posts worth, perhaps. I write more than that most days, but I write it as small pieces and there’s a world of difference between a thousand words for an article, and a thousand words as part of an ongoing project. To make 75,000 you only need to write about 3000 words a day, and that’s still not a lot in the grand scheme of things. It should, therefore, be easy to write a full length novel in a month.

The complication is that writing a novel is a lot more than grinding out enough words each day. The words have to be good, they have to add up to something that makes sense.

Of course you don’t start on the first of November with no ideas and go from there to having a complete and publishable novel by the end of the month. Anyone intending to write a book during November will have put in a bit of time beforehand, figuring out the characters, the setting, the plot, maybe even doing some research, planning out the chapters. Then after November, the book you have written in a month will need redrafting, and editing, and this too can and will take months. Writing a book in a month starts to look a lot like writing a book in a few months.

Some people benefit from pressure and deadlines, others are crushed to death by them. Some people only work at all if they feel they’ve got to get it done, and some of us only work well if we can sit down when we feel inspired. For some people, writing is a job that you do in a disciplined way by showing up for a set number of hours each day, and producing the required number of words. For others of us, that approach would be a creative death sentence.

I can make myself write short pieces of a less creative nature. I can write piles of blog posts and articles in a day, in a very workish fashion. That’s fine. If I try and produce a novel on those terms, I don’t experience anything like enough inspiration or enthusiasm to do a good job of it. I’ve written a lot of novels (I’m in double figures) using a range of approaches, and I know that tight deadlines and daily word counts result in wooden, joyless work. I don’t enjoy it, and I don’t end up with anything I think a reader would enjoy either, which entirely defeats the object.

Every writer is different. It is critically important to write in ways that suit you as a person, that play to your strengths and needs, and don’t hamper you. If you get excited by the idea of writing the first draft of a novel in a month, then give it a go. If it sounds like hell, stay away. Just because some people can produce a daily wordcount and pop it in their social media feed, doesn’t mean everyone should. Whatever method you use, there’s no guarantee of a good book at the end of it, no guarantee that even a very good book will find a publisher, and no guarantee that a published book will find a readership.

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