Below is a rant about NaNoWriMo. If you want the gist of my potential participation, current projections put me at halfway through my current project come Novembers beginning, so I probably won't participate. Now enjoy the pointless rant if you choose to read it.
NaNoWriMo always really bothered me. I like that it encourages writing, because despite what most writers think, waiting for 'the muse to give me inspiration' and 'taking it slow to make sure I get it right' are terrible ideas that won't get them anywhere. Writing is something that doesn't happen unless you practice it almost constantly, and even after you've written something, you've only just begun the long stage of editing. There is no 'best time to write'. Forcing out a first draft of questionable quality and spending months editing it is worlds better than staring at a blank screen for months saying 'maybe tomorrow'. So in this sense, I'm glad NaNoWriMo forces people to write consistently for a month with a word goal in mind.
What I don't like about it is all of the following. On another message board, back in July, when this was brought up, more than one person said 'Wow, I didn't know about this! I'll put off starting my new idea until November and participate' or 'Yeah, NaNoWriMo is great. I've been waiting for it since the last one ended.' Basically, this whole 'month of writing' thing actually hinders a lot of people. Don't stall until November, don't just anticipate the next NaNoWriMo after one ends. Writing can, and should, be done all the time, and all NaNoWriMo does is say 'Write in November!' and since people are lazy bastards, writing in July becomes 'nah, I'll wait until November'. But, NaNoWriMo gets people who would otherwise never write one month where they write, okay. That's progress, I'll admit. It's the people who otherwise would write more but choose to wait that makes me feel kind of bad for all that potential talent that's getting thrown away.
My second problem is kind of similar to the first in that, once November ends, 99% of the comments I read about people who participated were 'Oh, right, I still have the 30000 words I managed during the last NaNoWriMo that I stopped writing come December. I should look at that again sometime'. The instant NaNoWriMo ends, most peoples drive ends with it for some reason. Didn't finish on time? It won't be finished, even though finishing it in December is just as viable. Finish it but didn't edit it? It'll never be edited. Didn't even get started? It won't be started until next years NaNoWriMo because people keep waiting for things like this.
In a perfect world, one where I wouldn't need to make rants no one else cares about, NaNoWriMo would be a website where, rather than a single preset month, people can start on any day and have X number of days to finish. January 15th to February 15th, for example, or any other two month-apart days. And there would also be further goals to finish writing it by X date if you missed the first goal, and finish editing it by X date, all so that people don't just go 'Well, that was fun. Can't wait until next year' and go back to never writing.
But yeah, no one cares. Sorry for the long post. I don't mind if people participate for fun, or even seriously because having this as an incentive finally makes then work, but writing hard one month out of the year won't help them improve, which irks me. I'm sure there are a lot of people who write all the time, but also participate in November. And that's how everyone should be.
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