November has come to an end, and with it National Novel Writing Month, known in the industry as NaNoWriMo. The concept is simple: writers across the world alike sit down during the month of November and write 50,000 words of a novel. The project is immensely popular, with 307,000 authors signing up for the 2013 run – professionals and amateurs alike. (One of the best success stories is Sara Gruen’s Water for Elephants, which was made into a movie starring Robert Pattinson and Reese Witherspoon.)

NaNoWriMo is a brilliant project for several reasons:

• It has earned worldwide recognition and respect.
• Those participating become part of a wide community – and there are lots of opportunities for making new friends and contacts online as part of your writing work.
• The project offers a ready-to-go structure for your writing. However you break down the work, to succeed you must hit that 50,000-word mark by 30 November. It equates to 1,667 words per day.
• The pressure, the challenge, the sense of belonging – all these, and more, contribute to a drive for the writer to write, write, write, thereby forcing you past procrastination and blocks and into a place of pure creativity.
• The result – 50,000 words – can form the basis for a book that you then go on and develop, with a sense of relief that you already have the bare bones down on paper.

So with such compelling advantages, why isn’t every author, aspiring or established, across the globe diving in to NaNoWriMo each November?

• Time, first and foremost, can be an issue. The target of 1,667 words per day – or 12,500 words per week – perhaps looks, on paper, to be manageable. But during the month most writers must also hold down the day job and juggle family commitments. Some writers are faster than others; some really struggle to meet the targets, and then become depressed at what they perceive as ‘failure’.
• Pressure can be just what you need to get moving on that book you’ve long dreamt of writing. When the clock is ticking, you have no time for doubt – you’d better just get writing. But that pressure can be too much for some writers, who prefer to take time over their writing.
• Writing approach is also a big factor in whether you embrace NaNoWriMo or give it a wide berth. If you’re a writer who likes to bash out a quick first draft, the rough foundation for the book, and then come back and develop it then NaNoWriMo gets your project moving quickly. But if you prefer to perfect each chapter before moving on, and the quality of that first draft really matters to you, NaNoWriMo is likely to be a source of stress rather than accomplishment.

Personally, I think NaNoWriMo is a wonderful initiative: any project that encourages people who want to write to sit down and go for it is to be commended, and any writer who manages to complete the target deserves praise. As long as writers participating realise that the 50,000-word draft that is the end result of NaNoWriMo is just that – a draft, and not a polished book ready for publication – then the project is going a long way to helping so many writers break the back of their book-writing each year.

I’ll confess, speed writing in this way is not for me. I take several months to write a novel, having researched and planned it thoroughly, and I very much need the sense that what I’ve written thus far is of a certain quality before I can continue writing. I do, however, follow a similar discipline to the NaNoWriMo process: I break down the task of writing a book, I set small targets to reach and then I schedule my days carefully to ensure I am keeping on track.

How about you? Have you taken part in NaNoWriMo? Would you? Do you think there is something to be said for writing fast and then tidying later? I would love to hear your thoughts.

To find out more about NaNoWriMo, and to sign up and explore the community, visit http://nanowrimo.org/.