On writing that novel you've been considering!

Did you ever want to write a book? Most people have considered it at least once or twice. We're all full of ideas and experiences we're sure would benefit the world.
But how on Earth to get started?
Here's an easy kick-in-the-pants method.
Every November, there's a website that sponsors a novel-writing binge called NaNoWriMo. It stands for National Novel Writing Month.

You go to the free site at www.nanowrimo.org, make an account, and on November first, you just start writing that novel you've been thinking about. You have 31 days to write 50,000 words.
There's lots of support on the site, and you can keep track of your word count there.
Does 50,000 words seem like a lot? It's fewer than 2000 words a day. You can do it.
The old saw has it that, "A writer writes."
This is true. If you fancy yourself a writer, then it may be time for you to put up, or shut up.
The advice is to just plunge in. Don't stop to edit your work. Keep going. At the end of the month, if you've plowed on through, you'll have a novel.
YOU will be a novelist.
An unpublished one, sure, but that's a mighty cool group of people. All the best authors started out that way.
There is still a week left before November 1. Use the week to outline your novel. Come up with your characters, and your plot. Perhaps decide what will be the basic framework of your book. Then, on November 1, dive in.
If you have a beginning and an end in mind, and a basic understanding of what you want to happen in the middle, you'll be less likely to find yourself on a crazy tangent off in Argentina somewhere with your characters and unsure of how to bring them back home.
And be sure ... sure...SURE to back up your work. I lost my novel last year about 30,000 words in when my computer crashed, and I hadn't backed it up on a disk or thumb drive.
That. Hurt.
But, it wasn't really a very good book, anyway. :)
So. I'm going to do it this year. Two of my kids are going to do it this year.
Will you give it a try? I'd love to hear from you!
NOTE: I regret that I can not read or edit your book once it is done. I'm not really qualified to do so. I'm a newspaper editor, not a book editor. And I've never sold a book of my own, so why the heck would you want me to edit yours? But people ask all the time. So I thought I'd mention here that I simply don't have time. Sorry!
If enough people in the Cambridge area decide to take on this challenge, we can form a NaNoWriMo support group. Think coffee, think wine. Happy writing!