Ah, November. Football, a crisp chill in the air, piles of fallen leaves.  And National Novel-Writing Month–”NaNoWriMo”–that amateur-novelist love-fest that always makes me shake my head.

I’m fine with any motivation structure that gets butt in chair to write. And plenty of ‘learned’ or ‘informed’ amateur writers use “NaNoWriMo” to do writing they would be doing anyway. But “NanoWriMo” seems to extend beyond that into a deluge of deluded hobbyists.

There’s nothing wrong with a hobby. I build electric guitars. They don’t come out perfect, and I don’t mind. But I would never claim that my hobby-level work deserves to be paid for or could compete with the work of pro luthiers.

Something about fiction writing seems to attract amateurs. Unlike most hobbies, where you can’t even try them out without having some specialized learning or equipment, many amateur novelists somehow think that anyone who’s had an English class can write a novel. That there’s no need to study or learn. And that their novels, written without any training or insight, will deserve to be bought or to share the shelves with pro authors.

Laura Miller on salon.com last year offers the take of a reader. She’s not a fiction writer and so doesn’t understand the value of butt-in-chair. But she does see through the hoopla of “NaNoWriMo” to the patheticness of deluded hobbyists and the hypocrisy that they’re not reading.

I agree, especially about the reading. To that I’ll add the hypocrisy that they’re not studying writing or trying to learn something about it.

I echo her wish for hobbyist novelists to read instead of trying to write. For those who insist on trying to write, read a good how-to-write book first. Nancy Kress’s Beginnings, Middles, and Ends is one of the best.

So if not a National Novel-Reading Month, then maybe at least every October could be ‘national read a writing book’ month.

I had a great time at Capclave, a couple weekends ago.  (Except for the con-crud that delayed my postlude…)

Highlights included moderating a small press panel with Neil Clarke, Sean Wallace, and Mike Walsh of Old Earth Books. Meeting BCS authors Adam Corbin Fusco and David Milstein; hanging out with Jen and Melissa. Chatting again with BCS author and novelist Genevieve Valentine. Seeing co-GOH Cat Valente again (I met her last year at World Fantasy, when the BCS party woke her up at 2 AM :) ).

Speaking with James Morrow, who lectured my year at Odyssey. His novel about Darwin’s lady assistant flying a steampunk airship over the Amazon, which he read from at ReaderCon 2010, is in rewrites and hasn’t yet found a publisher. Which is sad because the excerpt was great. He really liked the cool BCS flyers I had.

Chatting in the bar for hours with co-GOH Carrie Vaughn, a fellow Odyssey grad and bestseller who I had never met in person.  She is mostly known for her urban fantasy, but she’s read tons of epic fantasy and published several dozen short stories, and knows a ton about the field.

The Terry Pratchett surprise visit. I’m not familiar with his work, but I know he’s a very clever and engaging guy. The excerpts that his assistant read from his new book were quite droll (although the assistant read for way too long and interjected his own opinions too often).

They only made enough time to take one question, and it wasn’t about his books but about a BBC documentary he had helped make on assisted suicide for terminally ill. He talked for twenty minutes about that, made even more profound because of his own health situation, and it was utterly fascinating. (I will be blogging about that specifically later.)  Someone in the crowd put it on youtube, and Capclave posted an mp3 of the audio.

The GOH interview. I didn’t know how they would do it with two GOHs. It turned out that Carrie and Cat know each other, so they interviewed each other and took pre-written audience questions.  It was the best GOH interview I’ve ever seen. They were engaging, witty, and profound. Topics included the sociological underpinnings of the mythoses of vampires and werewolves; writing for shared-world anthologies; writing goals and achieving them; where they live and the sense of place in their writing.

I was only at the con for a day and a half, but I had a great time seeing these cool people and having great conversations. That seems to be what I mostly get out of cons–talking to clever people about interesting things.  I’ll definitely be back next year.

This weekend I will be at Capclave, the local D.C.-area SF/F con.

The co-Guest of Honor this year is bestselling writer Carrie Vaughn, a fellow Odyssey grad.  I’ve heard her writing lectures in podcasts (they’re very insightful), but I’ve never met her in person.

The con again this year has lots of cool literary SF/F programming.  I will be on several panels, again this year:

Friday 8:00 pm:
Short Fiction: Where is the new good short fiction found now?

Saturday 11:00 am:
Small Press Publishing: Running a publishing company, publishing a magazine or semi-prozine.

Saturday 1:00 pm:
When Characters Threaten to Take Over

Alas, no reading this year, for some reason–I did ask for one.

I will probably swing by the hotel bar Friday after my panel, at 9PM.  I’m not sure how long I’ll be around Saturday, and I probably won’t be there Sunday.  If you see me, feel free to grab a snazzy BCS flyer and say hello.