November is National Novel Writing Month, a magical time when a young man’s thoughts turn to cranking out about 1,667 words per calendar day. The mission is simple: starting November 1st, write a 50,000 word work of fiction, finishing before December 1st. The reward is simple: the intrinsic value of having done so.

Aside from the word count and the time frame, there are no rules to get all bent out of shape over. It doesn’t have to be a great literary work. It doesn’t have to be edited. It doesn’t have to be shown to strangers or even friends. It doesn’t even have to be any good. It just has to be at least 50,000 words written in November.

Personally, I’ve got a very rough idea of the characters, settings, and stories I’d like to pound out, though I haven’t done anything formal like writing up an outline. I expect to never show the output of my 2007 NaNoWriMo effort to anybody but the automated word-counter, but who knows?

Hat tip to Logtar, whose recent post reminded me about all this.