Fifty thousand words in a month. For those unaware of the general length of novels, that's a lot. For those who know some things about novels and writing, it's not actually that much — 50,000 words rounds out to about a 200-250 page book, which isn't very long in the grand scheme of things. But it is a fairly large undertaking, especially for a month. It's about 1,667 words a day, which can be a lot if you're not used to it.

I've done NaNoWriMo, or National Novel Writing Month, every year since 2011. I've won each time (once with a frankly astounding, how did that happen it's never happening again, hundred and seventy thousand words), and this year, I wasn't planning on participating. I was past that. I have so many first drafts to rewrite, and that's what NaNo gives you, is yet another first draft. But then October drew to a close and I looked at the website. Just for old time's sake.

So, I'm doing NaNoWriMo this year.

NaNoWriMo has been criticized for a number of reasons, and perhaps the biggest one is that it doesn't give you a novel in thirty days, it gives you a first draft. It gives a bunch of people things that they're going to mistakenly submit to agents, and it'll just add to the slush pile.

But see - the point is not to write a good novel in thirty days, no matter how cool that slogan sounds. The point is to get something down on paper in thirty days, something that you can later rewrite and rewrite and revise and rewrite again. I've written things in months other than November before - I have more first drafts than I know what to do with, to be honest - and there's just something about the community that springs up in November that's beautiful. Whether it's beating literally everyone on Twitter in word sprints or just scrolling through forums, NaNoWriMo builds a group of people all around the world who are writing alongside you.

And that's kind of why I like it. I mean, like I said, have written other times than November. But in November it always seems sort of special, because i know there's a whole giant group of everyone else writing, too. And it's tracking progress through a graph, and it's making sure you get those words in on that day, and it's the satisfaction of winning and then... well, putting the draft in with all the other first drafts, not to be touched again for years.

And I guess, there is something to be said for actually writing something, and then perfecting it, and doing all of that before moving onto the next one. But for me, first drafts are my absolute favorite part of the writing process. I love learning who my characters are, seeing what character tropes (overly sarcastic jerks who maybe care about one person, tops) and names (Jacob or some version of, every time) I automatically float toward, and I love seeing where the plot takes me.

So this year, yeah, I'm doing NaNo again. I wasn't originally planning on it, I'd figured I would actually just rewrite some things rather than write something and then shelve it for three years, but now I'm over twenty-thousand words in and I am not going to stop until I win ten days early, write another ten thousand in an attempt to meet one of the years I surpassed one hundred thousand, and then peter out, write a bullet point list for the last few main plot points, and call it quits.