So after my post last week, anyone reading the blog regularly will know that I’m not doing Nano anymore. Probably never-more. It’s a personal choice, though, and I still wholeheartedly support anyone who wants to do it.
So I’m honestly surprised to see how much negativity is swirling through the interweb about the event this month. Maybe I’ve just broadened my feed settings this year vs. last, but it seems to me there’s a lot of extra vitriol floating in the ether this season.
I read a post today at a site I’ve been looking at for a few weeks, the second in a row of their contributor pieces that points out the folly of Nanowrimo participation and the apparent need of their posters to deny nanoers ‘writer’s street cred’ based on the hobbyist nature of the event.
I think that’s kind of pathetic, actually. It’s like the mean girls at High School trying to exclude the girl in a homemade dress from attending the prom. Com’on, people. Get over yourselves.
What really got me about that post, though, wasn’t so much the mean girl attitude of the poster – I’ve seen that before. The thing that really irked me to the point of hitting unsubscribe was the moderator in comments. One commenter basically said that she didn’t see the need to make nanoers feel like the scum on the writing pond. There’s room to share. And the moderator called the comment out as an example of how not to “flame” the contributor.
What?
Seriously?
Since when is a respectful, if metaphorically stated, disagreement with the contributor’s thesis the same thing as flaming? I think someone needs to brush up on her internet trolling terminology. Any blog that refuses to allow people to respectfully but strongly disagree isn’t the blog for me, particularly when it comes to something that is wholly opinion-based to start with.
The way *you* write isn’t necessarily the right way for everyone. Not even if you got it from an MFA program, or from an agent’s seminar, or from a best selling how-to book. The way *I* write isn’t the right way for everyone, either. There really is room in this big old world and in this big old profession for people of all sorts. The one-month-a-year writer included.
