It’s that time of year again — outlines are being prepared, computer keyboards are being abused, and coffee shops are crowded with furiously writing patrons who seem a bit too excited. These signs, of course, can only mean one thing:

National Novel Writing Month has finally arrived.

For those of you who haven’t partaken in this annual celebration, NaNoWrimo (as it’s commonly called) challenges participants to write a 50,000-word novel during the month of November. That roughly averages out to 1,667 words per day, which may or may not be a daunting task, depending on how much you normally write. Some people love the idea of NaNoWrimo, hailing it as a catalyst for creativity, while others scorn it as a colossal waste of time during a hectic holiday season. But who’s right and who’s wrong? It’s hard to say, until you look at the full picture.

NaNoWrimo Can Be Awesome

Supposedly, cranking out nearly 1,700 words a day for a month will indeed get you somewhere. It may not be where you wanted to end up, but there are plenty of things to be gained from the experience, such as…

Discipline

If you’re forcing yourself to sit down in a chair and write for a few hours every day, you’re slowly developing the habits of a good novelist, starting with developing a routine and sticking to it. After all, if you can keep it up for a month, what’s stopping you from continuing it for the rest of your life?

Practice

It’s been said that a writer needs to write over one million words before becoming an expert at the craft. That translates to roughly 1,000 words a day for three years, which (if only for a month) NaNoWrimo exceeds. Not only will you get five percent of this million-word quota in the bag during the month of November, but you’ll also be used to writing more than 1,000 words a day by the time that it’s over. You can only learn about writing through actually putting words on paper, and NaNoWrimo gives you a great opportunity to do so.

Increased Creativity

For the month of November, your internal editor (or the inner voice that degrades your writing) will be tragically stuffed into a closet and locked away. It’s almost impossible to complete the challenge if you’re constantly nitpicking and second-guessing yourself, and without that nagging little naysayer, your imagination will run wild. Want to write about zombie koala bears ? Go for it. No one’s going to stop you.

A Sense of Community

Writing can be a solitary endeavor, but with writers all over the world doing the challenge, it’s kind of hard to feel lonely. Friends, message boards, and local events are all there to keep you company as you set out to write the next great novel. You’re almost guaranteed to find a few new writing buddies by the time it’s all over.

But There Are a Few Drawbacks…

No one said writing a novel would be easy, but trying to write one in a month is bound to cause some issues. Before you decide to take the plunge, here are a few points that you might want to consider:

The Time Commitment

Every writer has a schedule, and often, NaNoWrimo may not be able to fit into it. You might have time to write 500 words every day, but amping that up to 1,700 words could put a strain on you and your other obligations. Everyone writes at their own pace, and this challenge’s demands might be too much for you. That’s okay -- you’ve got nothing to be ashamed of. Sleep is more important.

The Anxiety

For all the community feelings that it creates, NaNoWrimo can also feel like a competition. Everyone’s word counts are logged into a graph each day, and you might feel inadequate if all your writing buddies are doing substantially better than you. Pushing yourself to write better/faster in such a short amount of time may end up reducing you into a ball of nerves, and that’s not a good feeling.

The End Result

Let’s say you do manage to find the time and the right mindset to finish your novel. Congrats, you’ve completed the challenge...but what do you do now? You may have a diamond in the rough on your hands that just needs a bit of tweaking before it’s ready to be published...or you may have just banged out an awful, typo-ridden manuscript that no one in their right mind would ever print. A lot of novels in today’s market are longer than 50,000 words anyway, so you may end up adding to it, even though it was technically supposed to be “done” after November. If it’s not good enough or long enough to amount to anything, what did you really spend the last month doing?

So, Is It Worth It?

We’ve established that National Novel Writing Month can be a euphoric experience for a writer, or a twisted type of personal torture. But whether it’s really worth the effort is up for you to decide. A lot of great novels, such as Carrie Ryan’s "The Forest of Hands and Teeth," Erin Morgenstern’s "The Night Circus," and Rainbow Rowell’s "Fangirl" got their start during this month of rapid writing. Give it a try -- you never know what you could end up creating.