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ForeverTeal asked: “Are there any months for non-fiction writing?”
The answer is no, and is such on multiple levels. Firstly, according to my knowledge, there is no national non-fiction book writing month (note that I kept all words lower case so as not to overemphasize something that does not exist). I suspect this is because non-fiction doesn’t have the same romanticism as the novel. (That’s right, ladies, all us novelists ooze romance. Just look at Hemingway.) We don’t talk about everyone aspiring to write the Next Great American Non-fiction Book, nor do we proclaim that every person in the world has one non-fiction book in them. In fact, it strikes me that there are few things less romantic than writing non-fiction. Which brings me to my secondary point…
Secondarily, there will never be a national non-fiction book writing month, both because such an idea is perverse and because NaNoFiWriMo just sounds silly (when compared to the dignity of NaNoWriMo). To think of people all over the nation engaging in unified exertion to write in words imitations of things not in words that have actually happened… The very idea is off-putting. It would be like taking a month to celebrate mimes. No, non-fiction aspires to pale recreation; fiction is Creation, with a capital C. There is no doubt, in this writer’s mind, which is deserving of its own month.
And thirdly, there will be no national non-fiction book writing month because non-fiction is itself a fictional thing (meaning it doesn’t exist—no, I’m not joking, it really doesn’t exist). If such a non-entity were attached to a chronological fragment of reality I have this sick feeling that the space-time continuum would unhinge, unravel, and undo itself in general. I’m telling you, the fakeness of non-fiction is dangerous.
This is why there is no non-fiction writing month.
(If there is a non-fiction writing month, please, someone tell me, for I would like to be prepared when my atoms dissolve and disappear with the rest of the cosmos.)
Response from “The World Out There”:
April – National Poetry Month, complete with NaPoWriMo established in 1996 (3 years before NaNoWriMo) by the American Academy of Poets (to reject poetry as a nonentity would be to disown W.H.Auden whose work you have claimed to enjoy though not understood which men never can anyway per your conclusion that emotion is a purely feminine construct); also National Card and Letter Writing Month
November – in addition to NaNoWriMo, Family Stories Month (family stories usually being memoirs/bios/autobios which are generally nonfiction though not always purely) and National Life Writing Month; also Dear Santa Letter Month
December – National Write a Business Plan Month and Write to a Friend Month
Other months of interest:
January – National Book Blitz Month (feature book on a relevant website: 1,000 Places to See Before You Die [or atomize] – a nonfiction work)
February – Library Lovers Month (notice nonfiction genre sections when you next visit aforesaid institution)
October – National Book Month (note the various forms of aforementioned genre)
December – Read a New Book Month (note that books come in the nonfiction variety and thus exist, noteably one Writing the Breakout Novel by Donald Maass – a NONFICTION book I purchased yesterday, largely due to your recommendation of it at a workshop I attended. Care to retract any such non-entity statements?
Which begs the question: Are your opinions fictional or non-fictional? The implications of the first scenario are quite amusing. Those of the second mean you yourself are a non-entity.
Now, no quibbling, driveling, or dithering. Before you completely dissolve, please distill your atoms so that “Essence of Clint Johnson” remains as a trophy of my momentary victory and my antagonist’s demise in the latest battle of wits.
Warning to readers: this is what happens when you ask an innocent question and are subjected to public harangue. It is curiously a simultaneous honor and humiliation worthy regardless of some manner of retort.