if you don't show anyone your novel...

You are writing for the most important audience around: yourself. :)

And maybe someday down the line you'll change your mind and want to show it to everyone...but you won't be able to if you don't write it!

Well, I wrote a novel just for me once... just for me to read. No one else. Whenever I want to, I can pick it up and read it, and enjoy it. It is a real, tangible novel with an awesome story... and I am a human being and I enjoy reading it. It is a novel - a real novel! Just because only one person is reading it does not mean that it is not a novel and that it's the same as never having written it! I wrote it, and I read it, and that counts.
That's like... I wrote a song, and I sang it to myself... it's not like I never even wrote it or sang it, just because someone ELSE didn't hear it! Goodness me. I wouldn't worry about it. :)

When you stop writing for yourself, your writing dries up and become brittle. If no one reads it but you, that's fine - YOU read it, and I think somewhere your characters know they're being read by their creator.

And if you can stand reading them after you wrote them, that says it all right there :D

Faithless is he that says farewell when the road darkens. ...J. R. R. Tolkien

Sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast. ... Lewis Carroll

Full many a gem of purest ray serene
The dark unfathom'd caves of ocean bear:
Full many a flower is born to blush unseen,
And waste its sweetness on the desert air.

-Thomas Gray

There's always someone left to fight.

That's like saying:
"If a tree falls in the woods and nobody around but you is there to hear it, does it make a sound?"
You: "Um, yeah."

I have two paintings that I did hanging by my desk now and a spider plushie I made that I don't think many other people would like. They're not there for anyone else's enjoyment and soon they'll have a beautifully flawed first draft to keep them company.

Nanowrimo is not about writing a book that other people can enjoy, or that even you as the author could enjoy. The point of nano is to write a complete novel. The content of it doesn't matter. The only benefit of completing a nano novel is knowing that you can write a novel. It's like when you first ride a bike. You try to ride it, and you fall, and you keep trying. Eventually, you get really good, and then you start riding around in circles. Your excited because you figured out how to ride a bike, so you keep riding around in circles. Nobody would go up to you and say "What's the point of riding around in circles? You're not going anywhere." The point is knowing that you can. Eventually you will ride your bike somewhere, but first, you just gotta ride around in circles and enjoy the ride.

My writing teacher and I are war over this exact topic. When I write it is because it is something I need to say. it isn't because I want other people to read it. I may eventually have a few select people read it to help me polish it up but it isn't something I'm going to send out for publication.

My teacher says that we should write in a way for the reader to understand, I say write for yourself and if someone eventually gets to see it then that's cool.

My best example is Stephanie Meyer and her Twilight series. She wrote the book becasue she wanted to see what would happen to the characters. It took people forever trying to convince her to send it in and I think the most recent number I heard was 17 MILLION copies were sold of the series. 17 million books sold of a story she didn't intend to let anyone read.

Write the book for yourself and if, sometime down the road, you decide to let someone read it that is your choice. Never write for the reader. if you do writing becomes a chore and it ceases to be something fun to do.

"What's Life without a little chaos sometimes?" -Jaeden
"If you want chaos try rasing a set of twins. When you have to do that you try to find order wherever you can." -Aisling
"Like matching underwear?"-Jaeden
Forever's Just a Word-2008

Just tell them they can read it after you've edited it. Some writers spend YEARS editing... :D

My issue with writing for readers is that I wouldn't know which readers. There are so many people out there that you would have to keep in consideration. Since I know I that I cannot please every reader, I will just shoot for one, me.
If you are writing everything for someone else then what is the point. It's a chore to think about that. I want to write this and I will write this. If other people don't get it or get to read it that is my choice.

____________________________________________________________

People are free to read mine. It'll be done round about the fifth of never :P

BFS goals - http://www.nanowrimo.org/eng/node/1075131

AlwaysBeingDifferent I like what you wrote about learning to ride a bike :)

Write for yourself in the first place - if you write with other people in mind you will stifle your creativity.
If you feel ready to share your writing with others, then do. If you don't, treasure your writing for yourself.

Though leaves are many, the root is one.
W.B. Yeats

you don't write for readers; you write for yourself! And besides that, you never ever let someone read a rough draft unless they are that rare kind of person who can see what you meant but isn't written yet, and who inspires you to finish that gem of an idea hidden in the (usually) bad-at-first prose without at all dampening your inspiration. They can read it when you finish it and edit the life out of it and rewrite it and polish it within an inch of it's life and you finally declare that it's ready to be read by people without a ticket to your imagination. THAT'S when they might be able to read it. And not before. And even then, YOU get to decide, not them. After all, it is YOUR book.

Note: sorry for the overuse of caps, I just can't figure out how you italics, and I have too much wordcount to do today to spend a half hour figuring it out. lol *blushes*

Those two are not mutually exclusive. I am actually writing for my future self and I had better make sure that version of me still understands the story several years from now--which is almost the same as if I would want to make other people understand it.

商店街の谷間に、ささやかな水音が響く。

You only have to write for yourself. I certainly don't intend to let anyone read it, at least not anyone I know in real life. Might ask for some editors on the internet, though. Then I can hide in the safety of my anonymity. :-)

Originally this post contained instructions on writing in italics, but now it's not working for me and I can't figure out what I'm doing wrong. So irony in the extreme here.

You do italics by enclosing them in "tags" which are those things below with < and > around them.

Tricky to put them in a post in a way they can be seen! So I'll put broken ones in with spaces, so they aren't read and applied. Just do the same thing without the spaces.

Make < em >me< /em > italic!
without spaces in the tag gets you:
Make me italic!

Make < strong >me< /strong > bold!
without spaces in the tag gets you:
Make me bold!

Note the / character. That "closes" the tag. Everything between the opening and closing tag has that formatting applied to it.

Well of course you write for yourself. If you wrote for other people and you hated writing, that would be really stupid. That would be writing for the wrong reasons. I tell people they can't read my stuff because my stuff is unedited. Maybe I wrote a novel and it turned out not to be as good an idea as I thought it would be, so I don't show it to anyone. That doesn't mean I didn't benefit from writing it. I learned from writing it. And it will be something I can look back on and reread with fondness later on in life.

There is also no shame in not showing anyone your writing for a LONG time. Maybe you want to edit it and THEN it might be remotely ready for human consumption. There is nothing wrong with hiding your unpolished gems away.No one has to read it. No one but you.

~Lomelindi~

ah thank you! I never would have guessed "em" would translate to italics. The rest is familiar to me, just sometimes it's using ">" and sometimes it's using "]" but that part I can figure out using trial and error, and of course the lovely preview option for which I will be forever indebted. If it wasn't the last week of nano, I would totally edit that last sentence. *hides head in partial shame* So, thank you both! Hah, whaddya know, it works. ^_^ lol

First of all, you should be writing the novel for yourself, second it should only be shown once complete and third, is there a third? Most people just give you bad advice once you show them your work, the less people that see it in the beginning the better.

Novels are not meant to be read by anyone but the author until he or she feels it's time. That moment may never come, but I know that as it is right now, I would not want many people to read my novel. I have three different people reading it right now, but they are close friends and sworn to tell me only the following.

1) "I love it. Keep writing!"

2) "Wow. Just wow."

3) "Yes, Really."

and

4) "Get back to work, Lidia."

See? I use them as motivation. :) What I'm writing is to impress me, and maybe, one day, to impress others. But Like Stephenie Meyer said about Midnight Sun, It's a rough draft, not meant for others, only for herself.

Does that make it any less of a novel? No.

It just makes it more precious to the author because it is the baby just born, still gooey and wet and just begining to cry. (Gross image, but you get the picture, right?)

I might just take up energy drinks.

Oh, I see. Darn, I was thinking of another forum I visit that uses [i] and [/i] as italic tags. So thanks!

Because it was fun and you *wrote a novel* hello! Plus your novel writing abilities improved, and your next one will be even better!

=)
Highest Daily Word Count This Year - 10,003 ~ New Record: 11/1/08
Characters in the Story - 16
Days with No Nanoing - 1
Characters Killed - 3
Characters Revived - 1

2008 ~ The Truth About Our Universes

Writing a novel is good for you in so many ways, as other posters have said. You have no need to justify yourself :)

If people keep bugging you to read it just tell them it's your practice novel and that you'll write another one that they can read later. Or say they can read your novel only after you've read a novel they wrote. Or if they're really being a pain in the ass tell them you don't want them to read it now because if it did come out in the shops they wouldn't buy a copy and it would damage your sales ;)

I have a few novels coming out on that date. I'll mark my calendar. :D

I write because I enjoy it. If it turns out other people enjoy it as well, great!

"Everything's okay in the end. If it's not okay, it's not the end."

It's not the same as not writing one at all, but if you are not willing to let it be read by someone (even after the editing phase) then they are also right. What's the point?

-------------
Holiday special on my book Blood Forsaken. Visit the Online Store, enter the discount code MPXQMVDJ at check out, andget 25% off the cover price!

Holiday special on my book Blood Forsaken. Visit the Online Store, enter the discount code MPXQMVDJ at check out, andget 25% off the cover price!

For yourself. So that you have your story. Isn't that enough?

And don't say then you can just keep it in your head ... it's not the same at all, and as we get older the stories and the way we tell them does change. So immortalizing this one story in print is a way of preserving it, even if only for herself.

Proud Member of the Trebuchet Club!

I don't know about you guys but i write my story mainly to get it out of my head.
the characters, the setting, they're there, taking up space.
i write or type it so i can focus on other things.
of course, a few hours later more pops up, and i'm back again.
Vicious cycle. I LOVE IT!
and if someone else likes it too, good for them!

2008: It's All About The Wordplay *EPIC VICTORY!!!*