Have you heard of NANOWRIMO?  It’s the silly acronym for the National Novel Writing Month website.  The idea is that every participant attempts to write a 50,000 word novel during the month of November.  From their About section:

Valuing enthusiasm and perseverance over painstaking craft, NaNoWriMo is a novel-writing program for everyone who has thought fleetingly about writing a novel but has been scared away by the time and effort involved.

Because of the limited writing window, the ONLY thing that matters in NaNoWriMo is output. It’s all about quantity, not quality. The kamikaze approach forces you to lower your expectations, take risks, and write on the fly.

Make no mistake: You will be writing a lot of crap. And that’s a good thing. By forcing yourself to write so intensely, you are giving yourself permission to make mistakes. To forgo the endless tweaking and editing and just create. To build without tearing down.

Wow, blockquotes work weird with pictures.

Anyway, they go on, describing their vision, but I’m bothered that you never see a disclaimer.  “NaNoWriMo: Pushing people towards disillusionment because they can’t even follow through on writing ‘crap.'”

Oh to be sure, there are some that finish writing their crap.  12,959 of 79,896 people over the past four years, if my non-scientific tabulating of their authors page is correct.  That’s 66,937 failures, though, or about an 84% failure rate.

I’ll bet that’s on par with your typical New Year’s resolutions.

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