Do you know what NaoNoWriMo is? It's National Novel Writing Month.
During said month, which began November 1, thousands of people from around the world try their hand at writing novels. The deal is: you write about 1,667 words per day. After 30 days you have 50,000 words, which is the length of Hemingway's "Old Man and The Sea." I'm doing it now, for my future smash-hit novel, "Manhattan Husbands."
Three years ago, I did NaoNoWriMo upon the suggestion of Gretchen Rubin, the famous Happiness Project blogger. Basically I cobbled together the first, extremely sucky draft of The Creative Lawyer during that month. NaNoWriMo is a very Nike-ad kind of process. Instead of pondering what you might one day write, you just do it.
NaNoWriMo is based on the book, No Plot, No Problem. The basic point is that you just write every day. The one rule is that you are not allowed to read what you wrote. This prevents you from destroying your creative efforts with your internalized Voice of Judgment – the theoretically wise voice that makes you think that all your writing sucks.
In 2006, I joined NaNoWriMo late, 11 days into it. Hence I had to write 2,300 words per day (or something like that). The interesting thing is that even this larger duty still took only about 1 hour per day. It doesn't take that much effort to write book, but it does take some effort.
So all you would-be novelists and non-fiction writers: just go for it! See NaNoWriMo.org for details.
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