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.

But the blank page scares me. It always has. And so I have to have something spark this creative exercise in me-a prompt, something that says "here, try to shoot this freethrow with a football. Now shoot it with the basket twice as high as normal."

What's more, I wanted to find other people to do this with. I wanted someone who would read my attempt at creativity and whose attempt I could read, and we could say to each other, Dang, I wish I had thought of that!

Enter storypraxis, the community literary experiment I built to do just this.

Almost every day, a prompt is posted. You are encouraged to spend as little as ten minutes writing something sparked by that prompt--fiction, non-fiction, poetry, whatever.

You can then do whatever you want to do with that writing--post it on your blog, your facebook page, or just keep it in a notebook for yourself. We've also created a space for you to post it on storypraxis (as long as you post according to these simple guidelines). From there you can read other people's posts from that prompt all the way back to the beginning of the site in October, 2010. Posts are filed by prompt and by author.

I also wanted a way to highlight work that I thought was especially worth reading, in case people want to read a few select choices each day. So I created storypraxis magazine, which archives two to three posts per day from the storypraxis community. It's a quick and easy way to catch a few highlights from each prompt.

Because I think it is important to be challenged by each other, I write an editorial column every Sunday which updates users on any changes to the site and encourages people to read, comment, and share other posts from the community and the magazine. Saturday's prompt stays up all weekend long, giving participants a chance to take a breather and get involved in the community.

November is going to be a steady but slow month for us, I know, as NaNoWriMo is in full swing. There are a few brave souls doing both NaNo and storypraxis, and they must not have small children or a need for sleep. But the best part is that storypraxis isn't just for November, or just until the end of the year. We're going to keep going until Google Analytics tells me that no one but me is visiting the site anymore.

And even then, I might keep going. Because I am enjoying what the site is doing for me as a writer.

I also enjoying watching complete strangers show up and surprise me with their take on the prompt. I love the community that is building amongst regular users, and love getting to pick the most interesting, surprising, shocking, strange posts to feature in the magazine. In the end, it's all about us pushing ourselves to be better writers. So someday, when I decide to push myself to write for quantity, I'll have practiced quality and creativity so much that I actually make a few baskets each day.

If you're not doing NaNo, stop by storypraxis for some creative inspiration. If you are doing NaNo, but feeling a little stuck, try ten minutes writing something completely different. If you are doing NaNo and loving it, then you might want to bookmark this blog post for December 1st. We'll be waiting.

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Andy Meisenheimer is not knocking NaNoWriMo. In 2008 he wrote a 35,000 word novel that he thinks is pretty good (So why isn't that a win?). If you think Andy is brilliant, stop by storypraxis or consider working with him through The Editorial Department. If you think he's crazy, then this post was really written by someone else as a practical joke.