If you're like me, you're not doing NaNoWriMo. I know, isn't this a sin for someone who claims to be in the world of aspiring writers? But this is how it works for me: doing NaNoWriMo would be like going outside and shooting 1,667 freethrows a day on the basketball court. I would have to shoot so fast and quick that even after a month of having shot 50,000 freethrows, I wouldn't be any better at it. In fact, in order to shoot the freethrows, I would have to ignore every impulse on how to shoot freethrows better and instead focus on how to shoot them faster.

That's not how I like to do things. That might work for an NBA player who doesn't need to reevaluate how he shoots the ball, but for me, I need to figure out the best way before I go for volume. I'd rather push myself for quantity after I've worked out many of the quality kinks.

So instead, I'm writing daily with another goal in mind--practicing not the quantity of my writing, but the quality.

I wrote my first National Novel Writing Month novel in 2002, and the t-shirts for that year were emblazoned with "No Plot? No Problem!" (later the title to Chris Baty's excellent how-to guide to NaNoWriMo). I always wear that shirt a few times during November, so I may be biased here, but I feel that many NaNo participants put far too much focus on plot.

NaNoWriMo participants often define themselves as Pantsers or Plotters. Pantsers are the "seat of the pants" writers who dive in to writing with only a wisp of an idea. Plotters take the more organized approach of planning their characters or story arc before writing. I'm a pantser with plotter leanings, but I think there is merit to both approaches. Unfortunately, most of the pre-NaNo chatter seems to revolve around plot, plot, plot. "Do you have a plot?" "What's your story about?". Bloggers everywhere are offering advice on how to plot your story, how to outline, and how to organize your pre-writing research. That's all well and good, but I think many people spend so much time obsessing on plot that they forget the most essential element of their stories: the characters. A plot is only as exciting as the characters who carry it, and if you don't have compelling characters, no amount of plot scheming will save your story.

A few years ago, I was fortunate to stumble upon a 5-week writing class at my local community college. I had a B.A. in English with an emphasis in creative writing, but I learned more from this little class than in all four years of college. The best lesson of the class can be summed up in eight words, and it completely changed my approach to writing.

November 11th is a significant day for me. On this day in 2002, I started my first National Novel Writing Month novel. I had dutifully sat down at the computer at midnight on October 31st to begin my novel, and had written a few hundred words daily, but by November 10th, the story was going nowhere and I wasn't the least bit invested in it.

On the morning of November 11th, I decided to do something crazy - scrap my novel and start over.

On November first, at midnight, over 100,000 authors will dive into the National Novel Writing Month challenge. The TED office has been buzzing with NaNoWriMo excitement ever since we started on our NaNoWriMo issue of Between the Lines, but now it's reaching a fever pitch. Three staffers have signed on to the Novel-in-a-Month challenge, and at least two others are on the fence, so I thought this would be a good time to out our participants.