NaNoWriMo

Somehow I declined to post the single glory of the month of November on the day of its beginning. NaNoWriMo. It's wonderful and it's awesome and it's inspiring and it's motivating (and it's not for English class, sadly enough). NaNoWriMo stands for National Novel Writing Month, and the general rule is all participant writers have to write fifty-thousand words for their novel - and there are no criteria for content other than a) it has to be fictional, and b) it has to be your original work that you've written over the month - in thirty days.
It really is fun. This is my third year doing it(on the Young Writers site), and my goal for this year really is 50K. Last year I kept it at 30,000 and I don't remember what it was the year before that(honestly, I'm not even sure if I wrote anything for 2010). It is a great exercise for any and all writers. It keeps you on your toes and within quotas and you're zooming through it like a speed train. There is no room for writer's block, there is no room for editing or pondering the next chapter or the creation of this character: everything is an on-your-feet judgment call.
Last year I wrote what can only barely be considered fictional within semi-autobiographical writings. I created a character, Freddie Halsey, who was just as antisocial as I, and I put her in a Social Skills class for the year and she had to pass the class in order to graduate. I liked the idea at the time, but when I read it now, it really flopped. It just wasn't a compelling narrative. This year I'm writing a dystopian novel, somewhat related to Seeking a Friend for the End of the World in plot (the whole asteroid-will-hit-the-earth-in-a-month-and-all-humanity-will-be-lost type thing), centered around technology, and my main character claims to be the only literate person alive - the early stages of the story focus on the importance of her journaling to her and how it's rumored to be illegal... Anyway, you've likely already lost interest, which is well enough, because that summary was just a ruse. Not a lie, just a devious way of keeping my juicy dystopian fantasy to myself. (If you are interested, add me on Google Plus and I'll send brief excerpts of the story.)
So. NaNoWriMo. If you're a writer, you should think about it. It's fun.