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ruslan (![[info]](http://www.journalfen.net/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} ruslan) wrote in ![[info]](http://www.journalfen.net/img/community.gif){kind=small} otf_wank,@ 2009-10-05 18:50:00 |
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If a marathoner runs outside of Boston and nobody's there to hear it, does it deserve a purple bar?
It's the first (mini)wank of NaNo 2009! *pops champagne* Tiny, considering that the wankery is contained entirely in RiddleMeThis like some kind of nuclear radiation coffin, but passably amusing.
Okay, you all know what National Novel Writing Month is, right? It's an informal contest where the goal is to write a 50,000+ word novel in the month of November. You're not competing against other people and you don't really get anything if you "win" (aside from a feeling of accomplishment and a little purple bar beneath your forum name) but it's competitive enough that some people get really touchy over what constitutes a victory. Some people think the goal is to write a novel, some people think it's just to get 50,000 words down. The general consensus seems to be that as long as you're not doing this you're fine.
User chet-a-box posts asking:
I'm 90% sure I'll be writing a non-fiction book about my passion for giant pandas.
Is that allowed?
There are three or four responses, primarily by a staff member (Dragonchilde) saying very nicely that nobody's going to stop anybody from writing what they want, but *technically* it wouldn't really be the point of NaNo seeing as how they define a novel as a lengthy work of fiction. (Of course it should be noted that NaNo is welcoming of flexible approaches to the contest. They have a NaNo Rebels forum specifically for people who want to do things like write short stories or screenplays for their challenge. Additionally, the rules state that if the writer considers it a novel, they consider it a novel too). chet-a-box seems a little disappointed but takes it rather well and it's a polite, respectful, wankless thread. The end!
Well, no.
RiddleMeThis posts a thread in the NaNo Rebels forum entitled NaNoWriMo's Discrimination Against Creative Non-Fiction, saying that, essentially, non-fiction should be allowed to count as a NaNo victory because the state of our nation demands it.
I just read this thread, and it made me very angry. So, here, have a rant.
If you ask me, the idea that we CANNOT submit 50,000 words of creative non-fiction and still ACTUALLY win NaNoWriMo is utter crap.
Take a look, for example, at New Journalism, a style of writing that emerged in the 60s and 70s in America. These authors wrote books that were technically non-fiction, as they were HEAVILY based on real things that happened, but they utilized literary techniques previously only seen in fiction. In the crazy falling apart world of the 1960s, they felt that American culture was no longer an easily definable space of knowable value, simple enough to be wrapped up in a pat fiction novel. The popular conversation of America within the novel had been degrading for a while. In a time and place so crazy and out of sync with itself, the New Journalists felt that there was no need to make stuff up in order to be valid and creative. There could be no Great American Novel because fiction was simply not enough to support analysis of a failed American dream.
Isn't our current situation (at least in this country) similar to that of the 60s? We are a nation in crisis, protests a-plenty, disillusionment with the way things are run and done. Doesn't non-fiction in this time almost carry more weight than fiction?
NaNo novels: serious business.
Staff member cybele posts saying:
The rule is, If you consider the book you're writing a novel, we consider it a novel too!
If you don't, well, no biggie. You're a rebel. You still get the book out of it in the end ... isn't that the awesome part?
If you do, well I hope this is the winning year for you.
RiddleMeThis responds:
See, that's VERY different than what was being said over in this thread, where people kept telling chet-a-box that she couldn't "technically" win NaNoWriMo if she wrote about pandas.
Another staff member (the one from the panda thread, Dragonchilde) has a somewhat different opinion, as well as a bad metaphor:
Would you be angry if you ran a marathon, presented yourself in Boston on Race Day, and was told that in fact you could not win the Boston Marathon because you ran another race entirely?
This is the same. For the purposes of our challenge, we require that your work be fiction. Is it an arbitrary rule? Sure! But it's the rules of the challenge as we've had for years. The rule that you have to be in Boston to run the Boston marathon is arbitrary, too.
If you complete 50,000 words of creative nonfiction you have a lot to be proud of. The REAL prize of NaNoWriMo isn't the printable certificate or the web badges... it's the novel at the end. But if you don't stick by those arbitrary rules of our arbitrary challenge... well, you're not really winning the challenge. If you still want to validate int he end, well, no one's stopping you. And no one will check up.
Also adding, absurdly:
It has nothing to do with the pandas. It's the "non-fiction" part.
RiddleMeThis:
Well, I guessed that much, I'm not an idiot. I didn't think you guys discriminated against pandas. Everyone loves pandas, that would be ridiculous.
The race metaphor is really poorly thought out. I'm not writing my novel for a different contest and then showing up here. I'm writing it in a different way. So if I ran your marathon backwards, and I crossed the finish line, would anyone really tell me that my win was invalid just because I did it differently? No.
As it clearly states in the official rules, which even cybele mentioned, even though YOUR definition of a novel is fiction, MINE isn't, and that's what counts when it comes to winning. So stop acting like if I validate my NON-FICTION NOVEL, I'll be some awful and immoral person for cheating the system.
A few forum members weigh in:
You seem to have blown things out of proportion here, there's no need to be so angry when teh site actually embraces the "Rebels."
Just to add to this I would like to point out that in the actual forum description for the Nano Rebels it includes the line "non-fiction about turtles" so surely that is a gesture of acceptance if nothing else.
calm. the *bleep*. down.
Everyone (including Dragonchilde) is really supportive and polite and continues to repeat that you can pretty much do whatever you want as long as you yourself consider it a novel and the challenge will embrace it, but RiddleMeThis still clings to hir weird persecution complex, and then flounces.
It's the first (mini)wank of NaNo 2009! *pops champagne* Tiny, considering that the wankery is contained entirely in RiddleMeThis like some kind of nuclear radiation coffin, but passably amusing.
Okay, you all know what National Novel Writing Month is, right? It's an informal contest where the goal is to write a 50,000+ word novel in the month of November. You're not competing against other people and you don't really get anything if you "win" (aside from a feeling of accomplishment and a little purple bar beneath your forum name) but it's competitive enough that some people get really touchy over what constitutes a victory. Some people think the goal is to write a novel, some people think it's just to get 50,000 words down. The general consensus seems to be that as long as you're not doing this you're fine.
User chet-a-box posts asking:
I'm 90% sure I'll be writing a non-fiction book about my passion for giant pandas.
Is that allowed?
There are three or four responses, primarily by a staff member (Dragonchilde) saying very nicely that nobody's going to stop anybody from writing what they want, but *technically* it wouldn't really be the point of NaNo seeing as how they define a novel as a lengthy work of fiction. (Of course it should be noted that NaNo is welcoming of flexible approaches to the contest. They have a NaNo Rebels forum specifically for people who want to do things like write short stories or screenplays for their challenge. Additionally, the rules state that if the writer considers it a novel, they consider it a novel too). chet-a-box seems a little disappointed but takes it rather well and it's a polite, respectful, wankless thread. The end!
Well, no.
RiddleMeThis posts a thread in the NaNo Rebels forum entitled NaNoWriMo's Discrimination Against Creative Non-Fiction, saying that, essentially, non-fiction should be allowed to count as a NaNo victory because the state of our nation demands it.
I just read this thread, and it made me very angry. So, here, have a rant.
If you ask me, the idea that we CANNOT submit 50,000 words of creative non-fiction and still ACTUALLY win NaNoWriMo is utter crap.
Take a look, for example, at New Journalism, a style of writing that emerged in the 60s and 70s in America. These authors wrote books that were technically non-fiction, as they were HEAVILY based on real things that happened, but they utilized literary techniques previously only seen in fiction. In the crazy falling apart world of the 1960s, they felt that American culture was no longer an easily definable space of knowable value, simple enough to be wrapped up in a pat fiction novel. The popular conversation of America within the novel had been degrading for a while. In a time and place so crazy and out of sync with itself, the New Journalists felt that there was no need to make stuff up in order to be valid and creative. There could be no Great American Novel because fiction was simply not enough to support analysis of a failed American dream.
Isn't our current situation (at least in this country) similar to that of the 60s? We are a nation in crisis, protests a-plenty, disillusionment with the way things are run and done. Doesn't non-fiction in this time almost carry more weight than fiction?
NaNo novels: serious business.
Staff member cybele posts saying:
The rule is, If you consider the book you're writing a novel, we consider it a novel too!
If you don't, well, no biggie. You're a rebel. You still get the book out of it in the end ... isn't that the awesome part?
If you do, well I hope this is the winning year for you.
RiddleMeThis responds:
See, that's VERY different than what was being said over in this thread, where people kept telling chet-a-box that she couldn't "technically" win NaNoWriMo if she wrote about pandas.
Another staff member (the one from the panda thread, Dragonchilde) has a somewhat different opinion, as well as a bad metaphor:
Would you be angry if you ran a marathon, presented yourself in Boston on Race Day, and was told that in fact you could not win the Boston Marathon because you ran another race entirely?
This is the same. For the purposes of our challenge, we require that your work be fiction. Is it an arbitrary rule? Sure! But it's the rules of the challenge as we've had for years. The rule that you have to be in Boston to run the Boston marathon is arbitrary, too.
If you complete 50,000 words of creative nonfiction you have a lot to be proud of. The REAL prize of NaNoWriMo isn't the printable certificate or the web badges... it's the novel at the end. But if you don't stick by those arbitrary rules of our arbitrary challenge... well, you're not really winning the challenge. If you still want to validate int he end, well, no one's stopping you. And no one will check up.
Also adding, absurdly:
It has nothing to do with the pandas. It's the "non-fiction" part.
RiddleMeThis:
Well, I guessed that much, I'm not an idiot. I didn't think you guys discriminated against pandas. Everyone loves pandas, that would be ridiculous.
The race metaphor is really poorly thought out. I'm not writing my novel for a different contest and then showing up here. I'm writing it in a different way. So if I ran your marathon backwards, and I crossed the finish line, would anyone really tell me that my win was invalid just because I did it differently? No.
As it clearly states in the official rules, which even cybele mentioned, even though YOUR definition of a novel is fiction, MINE isn't, and that's what counts when it comes to winning. So stop acting like if I validate my NON-FICTION NOVEL, I'll be some awful and immoral person for cheating the system.
A few forum members weigh in:
You seem to have blown things out of proportion here, there's no need to be so angry when teh site actually embraces the "Rebels."
Just to add to this I would like to point out that in the actual forum description for the Nano Rebels it includes the line "non-fiction about turtles" so surely that is a gesture of acceptance if nothing else.
calm. the *bleep*. down.
Everyone (including Dragonchilde) is really supportive and polite and continues to repeat that you can pretty much do whatever you want as long as you yourself consider it a novel and the challenge will embrace it, but RiddleMeThis still clings to hir weird persecution complex, and then flounces.
