Becoming an official winner of Nano has been a life-long (I mean, a four-year long) dream of mine. To see that 50,000 word count by November 30th would truly be spectacular. But I know it's not a plausible dream. But guess what? It's not too late for you to join me (and hundreds of thousands of fellow authors) in failing Nano this year.
Participating in Nano energizes me. Who isn't inspired by a slowly rising word count? If you have the time (which if you did, you would likely be a winner not a failure), many areas have meeting times to write. Just knowing that there are fellow authors distracting one another from writing their manuscripts gives me the fuel to push through that extra hour I should be spending on sleep. (The coffee helps, too.) And even though I know that I'm going to fail, it doesn't matter.
Participating in Nano keeps me on track. I often let silly things like work and school and over editing get in my way of writing. During Nano, I make time to write despite those things. Of course, I still make sure to leave room in my schedule for important things like getting distracted by metaphoric squirrels, making coffee runs, and of course trying my hand at guest blogs for Critique Circle.
Participating in Nano gets my work done faster. Bottom line, no matter how gloriously I wind up failing, I still end up writing a greater number of words in November than any other month. Sometimes, I can even keep the scheduled writing up until February. Although life continues to eat away at time to write, I always look forward to being able to be a part of such a large community of writers. I love that CC is an official part of it this year.
So, if you've never joined the Nano bandwagon, you can still join. There is still a week for you to fail. Not reaching 50,000 words could still be a great opportunity. Be energized, get on track, get your novel done faster, and be inspired as you join the community of failures (unless, of course, you are awesome enough to win and then serious kudos to you) at Nano. Meanwhile, since I'm failing miserably, I shall now return to staring at a blank screen, trying to reach my goal for the day.