I doubt the success rate of first time NanoWriMo-ers is terribly high. I mean, first you have get comfortable with just thinking about scribbling out 50,000 words; only then can you jump over those obstacles. Without the preparation, it's difficult to attain the success. Honestly, the point of NanoWriMo doesn't seem to be to win (even if that free certificate is pretty darn enticing)...it's to get people excited about writing.
Sadly, my December thus far has been sorely lacking in all things creative. Mainly I'm just pounding out blog posts and pretending to study while we have an America's Next Top Model marathon or two (or five). But I have been getting much more into reading, recently, and I pretty much devoured John Green's The Fault in Our Stars in an entire night. That usually only happens when the book's about French people. Or cheese. I've always been a big appreciator of cheesy literature (see what I did there? Heh...heh). But just because I've never had cancer before, nor have I ever ventured anywhere near video games, I could still identify with Hazel and Augustus because they carried so many traits that we find in almost all of human kind. I mean, when I first started reading Green's novel, I was all, "who is this Augustus and why on Earth was he stuck with such an unfortunate name?" By the end of the book, I was sobbing my eyes out and felt as though I'd known Hazel and Augustus for years.
I know this is where we start to differ--I've always drifted towards realistic fiction whose characters are similar to someone you'd see walking down the street, while your holiday reading is The Illiad (which I'm still heavily impressed by). And I don't think there's a right or wrong way to view a book or which genre they should enjoy--I'm just wondering, what is the ultimate goal of fiction? Is it to give people an escape? To make us better informed citizens of society? Or is it simply to just...tell a story?
In Ian McEwan's Atonement, Briony is a girl who primarily lives internally. She focuses on the world of the characters in her plays, consequently, she has a strong hold on what motivates many different personalities and what makes people tick. However, she is not interested in indulging in any character studies; rather, she'd much prefer to work on plot twists and intense stories: "Wasn't writing a kind of soaring, an achievable form of flight of fancy, of the imagination?" (147). Briony prefers to harp on dramatics, which is essential to any story whose goal is to entertain, but without a deep focus on character study, the story can fall flat. So should the two modes of fiction bounce off each other, or does one take precedence? Is writing more about creating personalities and human characteristics, or exposing them?
Personally, I dive into stories with characters I can relate to, but I understand the appeal of devouring novels about war heroes and firey chasms of death (cough, cough, Twilight, cough).
Peace and Ponies,
Kira
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