[johnny]

Yeah, I think that the support group on the site and stuff is really the only reason why people participate in NaNoWriMo rather than, say, picking a month they're off from school and doing the exact same thing on their own. With NaNo, it's easier to find people going through the same thing that you are, and you can grumble and compare notes on exactly how miserable you are and how far you've gotten in your schedule. You could be in writing groups and have other writers to talk to, but you're unlikely to have writing groups with hundreds of thousands of other people who are in exactly the same situation and with the exact same goal as you have. I think the shared experience makes a big difference and it's a big reason why people participate in the big national event rather than just locking themselves in their bedroom for the month of July and banging out a super-rough-draft of a first book.

I personally wanted to do NaNoWriMo because I thought I could connect to other writers and it would be this great fun thing and I could finally focus on writing and talking to people about writing (which I never get to do because, frankly, my real-life friends couldn't care less how or why people write and every time I bring up something I'm thinking about writing their eyes just gloss over and I suspect they're thinking about laundry or grocery shopping or other more, comparatively, exciting things) but I seem to be losing before I've even really begun so... That plan's a bit of a dismal failure.

Now I'm just hoping I can do something so I could maybe move on to a more logical hobby. Like knitting.