About NaNoWriMo

Once a year, a few thousand people, inspired by something they read on the Internet, get together and go insane for an entire month. No, it’s not Burning Man, although it does get about as surreal by the end.

It’s NaNoWriMo — and if you are not in the know, that stands for National Novel Writing Month. The idea is that you sign up at nanowrimo.org, then spend the month of November writing a 50,000-word novel or 50,000 words of a novel, depending on whether you’re leaning toward the letter or spirit of the event.

In case you skipped your math classes, that’s almost 1,700 words a day, every day, for 30 days. You’d have to be crazy to try, even if you got some big prize for completion, which you don’t. Pretty much all you get is the knowledge of a job well done (never mind the 50,000 words done on a novel), so, yes, you are crazy to do it.