Well, I’ve done NaNoWriMo for the last two years and I’m going to do it again this year. Last year I got the 50,000 words done in 30 days and I would say that what it showed me was that it can be done. And I was working a full-time job at the time.

I had to do 1,666 words a day to make the deadline and some weeknights, after spending the day at work, trust me, the last thing I wanted to do was write, but I did it.

The local NaNoWrimers (I guess that’s what we’d call ourselves) would meet every Wednesday evening at a coffee shop or wherever to write. It was great, being able to feed off the energy of the group. At the end of it all we had a little celebratory get-together.

So, yeah, at least for me it worked. Now, I will confess that what I wrote last year was a mess but this year I’m going to spend more time in prepartion. Actually, my plan is to use NaNoWriMo as a means to get a formatted outline done, like the one Karen showed us at the RWA meeting.

And I totally agree. The more you’ve thought things out ahead of time the smoother and faster the writing goes. That’s not to say you still don’t have surprises when you write. You do. But I think the fact that you are power writing and have done the necessary preping to fuel that power writing helps to generate those wonderful little jewels of insight or language that seem to pop out of nowhere.