NaNoWriMo: Naysayers and cheerleaders

Last night I was procrastinating needing some inspiration so I spent a little time on the NaNoWriMo site cruising the forums.  There I came across what appeared to me to be an unnecessarily nasty Salon opinion piece,  Better yet, DON'T write that novel.   It was really a rant about the time-wasting, foolish folks who have the audacity to try to write a novel in a month.  The arguments were not very convincing to me:  I am not planning on submitting the fruits of my month of labor to a publisher, nor are my children (though they do ponder occasionally the joy of someday seeing a novel published - and that is a bad thing because...?).  I won't be nagging friends and loved ones to read it; in fact I don't expect anyone to read it, ever.  We still read books; apparently many people believe NaNoWriMo participants spend all their time writing crummy novels and never, ever read.

That forum thread lead me to the antidote, 12 reasons to ignore the naysyers: DO NaNoWriMo.

Reading the comments on both pieces could take the better part of a day, which is time better spent writing.  One comment on the Salon piece really made me laugh.  The commenter was agreeing with the author's premise that NaNoWriMo is a waste of time, because one year some friends of hers did it and thus were unavailable to socialize with her during November.  Poor neglected one, eh?  I love people who make everything all about them.

In any case, I will carry on.  I haven't done a bit of writing today, preferring to work on a wall quilt side by side with my daughter, rake leaves, supervise cookie baking, and other homey sorts of things.  I also received in the mail today a book I'd been wanting for a while and finally had reason to buy:  Arthur Ransome & Captain Flint's Trunk, which is all about the real people and locations behind Swallows and Amazons.   Surely this will help with the needed inspiration!