October: National Don't Write a Novel Month

National Don't Write a Novel Month

The people over at National Novel Writing Month advocate that you write a novel over the course of November. Their motto is: The World Needs Your Novel. According to their website, over 500,000 participated in this event in 2015 alone. A word count of 50,000 words says your novel is done.

Here are the reasons to write a novel in one month:

1. James Patterson never takes more than a month to write a novel.

In contrast, here are the reasons to NOT write a novel in a month.

  This is a lie --> The World Needs Your Novel. <-- This is a lie.

The world does not need 500,000 novel novels each with 50,000 words. Writing agents and editors don't need 500,000 queries come December. Self-publishing venues DO NEED 500,000 novels but your relatives don't need ten copies each of  your quickly-crafted output.


My Vision.

The world needs well-written novels. For this reason, I am launching October as "Don't Write A Novel Month." Don't-Wa-No-Mo. Join over 320 million Americans and over 7.4 billion people worldwide who are not writing a novel in October.

Let's get this question out of the way: What if I am already writing a novel? Continue. Just don't start and finish a novel during October.

Writing Is a Serious Endeavor and Novels Are Not the Place to Start.

I love short novels. I advocate for them. The Great Gatsby, Slaughterhouse Five, The Daughter of Time, We Have Always Lived in the Castle, and many others hover around the 50,000 word mark.

These novels did not take a month to write and no novel should be written in a month. Among writing projects, a novel is not the place to start. Stanley Ellin took a month to write each of his short stories and the patience and love shows. I enjoyed Stanely Ellin's short stories so much, I accidentally bought two short story collections by Stanley Elkin by mistake. (Idea: Change my name to James Puttersen.)

So you want to be a novelist.

Writing is a craft. It is not learned in a month or a year. A novelist is a cabinet-maker. With years of practice and dedication, you can make a cabinet that looks like this:

Fine craftsmanship

Or you can be proud of your IKEA I-can-slap-cork-boards-together skills.

Or you can come up with this.

Why Doesn't Mine Look Like The Picture?

But, you say, writing a novel isn't like making a cabinet: it's like constructing a building. You can take your time and with diligence and practice and more than a month's worth of effort you can design this building.

Or you can take a month and come up with this.

New Windows for an Old Building

Or this:

The key problem: Americans are taught they are special. Every advertisement, every attentive lie tells them the individual matters. Therefore, the individual concludes: what I say must also be important.

Alright, you do matter. But mattering is not a talent, and mattering is not even an accomplishment. (I was-a born in the USA! I nailed that landing!) Having something to say is not a talent. Saying it well is a talent. Writing is a talent. Learning a craft takes time and once that craft is learned, practicing it takes time. Promoting writing a novel in one month is like advocating a two-day health plan or sixty-second sex.

Poor writing is pollution. It stings the eyes. It interferes with the inhalation of life-giving beautiful prose. It clutters the mind. It creates a wasteland of unedited books that spray like skunk farts on the body of literature. It convinces its readers, victims, all of them, that literature is painful or boring to read. It insults those who take the craft seriously.

The challenge to write-a-lot is a poorly conceived proposition. Write well. Practice and in time you can express those stories locked inside you.

Don't write a novel in October. And, if I haven't yet convinced you of abandoning the one-month idea altogether, you can always write a novel in November.


Martin Hill Ortiz is the author of Never Kill A Friend, Ransom Note Press.

Never Kill A Friend, Ransom Note Press

Never Kill A Friend is available for purchase in hard cover format and as an ebook.
The story follows Shelley Krieg, an African-American detective for the Washington DC Metro PD as she tries to undo a wrong which sent an innocent teenager to prison.

Hard cover: Amazon US
Kindle: Amazon US
Hard cover: Amazon UK
Kindle: Amazon UK
Barnes and Noble 

Martin Hill Ortiz is also the author of A Predator's Game. His epic poem, Two Mistakes, recently won second place in the Margaret Reid/Tom Howard Poetry Competition. He can be contacted at mdhillortiz@gmail.com.