Everyone has had that fantastical dream so full of action, romance, and drama that it outcompetes any Hollywood movie and leaves you in awe. When you have to wake up from it in the morning, your first thought is "that would make an amazing book," so you proceed to write down the idea, imagine your life as a published author, and inevitably never end up writing the book.

If this sounds familiar, then participating in NaNoWriMo may be the push you need to get your brilliant idea out of your head and into the real world. NaNoWriMo, or National Novel Writing Month (alternatively nicknamed Nano), is a month-long annual event taking place in November, in which writers from around the world attempt to complete a fifty thousand word novel in one month. While an unorthodox approach to writing, here are five reasons why it's one of the best ways to write a book that you'll find.

1. NaNoWriMo shuts down your inner editor.

Perhaps you tried writing a book and realized that no matter how much blood, sweat, and tears you put into it, what you wrote down couldn't compare to the scene that you envisioned in your head. So, you re-wrote, and re-wrote, and rewrote, trying to get it just right and consequently never made it past chapter one. It's a pitfall for even the most experienced writers and especially challenging for novice ones.

The foundation of Nano is to stop overthinking and just write. No matter how much effort you put into your first draft, it will have to be picked apart and re-written later during the editing process anyway. It can be incredibly beneficial to picky writers to just get the words out, regardless of quality. After all, you can fix a flawed manuscript. You can't fix a manuscript that doesn't exist if you get too caught up in the details.

NaNoWriMo is so fast paced that no matter how much you may want to dwell on every detail of your first draft, you simply don't have the time.

2. You'll learn to make time to write.

Consistency is the key to finishing a manuscript. NaNoWriMo participants aim to write at least 1,667 words per day. Writing that many words in a single day isn't particularly difficult, but writing so many words per day every day proves to be quite challenging for most. After all, there are so many other important obligations that take up our days that it leaves no time to write.

The time commitment is one of the top reasons why aspiring writers never complete their book. While the word goal per day is particularly steep during Nano, it gets you into the habit of writing a substantial amount every day and sticking with a schedule, no matter how hectic the day has been. Moreover, since NaNoWriMo takes place in November, it teaches you to plan around holiday madness and end of the year deadlines. While you probably won't write 1,667 words per day during other months of the year, the rigorous NaNoWriMo schedule will give you the skills needed to keep writing at a steady pace after the event ends.

3. Your writing style will improve.

As the saying goes, practice makes perfect. As you write, you'll better learn how to implement your ideas in order to make a scene read the way you envision it, and will be offered the opportunity to experiment with different techniques. After playing around with your style so much, you'll be astonished by how much your writing will have improved from day one to day thirty. Even just a week of NaNoWriMo has yielded noticeable improvements in many participants' writing styles, and these skills can be taken with you into your school work, professional work, and social life, as well.

4. You'll have access to one of the largest and most helpful platforms for writers.

Because NaNoWriMo isn't easy, the Nano site houses extensive forums for writers to support each other. There will always be other writers available to build you up, help you plan your story, fill in plot holes, design stunning free book covers for you, and edit work once the month is complete. These forums also offer opportunities for like-minded writers to meet up and continue supporting one another even after NaNoWriMo has ended.

5. NaNoWriMo offers a sense of accomplishment.

Despite the difficulty of writing a novel in a month, between the energy of the hundreds of thousands of writers taking place in the event, and the excitement of finally writing your own page-turning story, NaNoWiMo can be quite enjoyable. At the end of the month, you'll have something physical and real that you've worked very hard on, and will have done something that few people can say they've been able to do. That kind of accomplishment is truly unparalleled, and the unique joy of someone relishing a story that you've created may just be the greatest feeling in the world.