National Novel Writing Month. It is both the bane of writers and the savior. Write the rough draft of a novel in one month, they said. It’s 100% possible, they said. It will be fun, they said. I don’t know who they are, but they’re a totally different type of person than I am. After four years of participating, I’ve never won a single year of NaNoWriMo yet. And I’m perfectly okay with that. Sure, NaNo might have all these rules and expectations, but in the end, it’s your goals that matter, not theirs. When Is the Best Time to Write? Write now! My goal for NaNoWriMo has always just been to write. Almost always, NaNo has been my excuse to either finish a story I was already working on, or at least make a big dent in it. If I’d been unable to get a word down for months, November became the dedicated month to get over that. Sure, I kept that 50k finish line in mind, too, but it was never my actual goal. NaNo and me, we don’t mix very well. The arguably biggest rule of NaNoWriMo is to neve