Howdy! I'm Tim, and this will be my 8th attempt at NaNoWriMo. One of my friends on Facebook recently posted she hated NaNo because "it emphasized quantity over quality." The first year I attempted NaNo, I wrote like I had always written: stopping every few sentence to go back and endlessly tweak every little line. That first year taught me a lesson: a person could write like that forever, in an endless quest for quality, and never finish anything.

Doing this challenge has taught me a lot about writing. It exposed a lot of my own weaknesses, but it also highlighted my strengths. NaNo is about setting a goal and pushing yourself to achieve it. I recommend doing NaNo to anyone who is seriously considering being a writer. Good luck, everybody!