I have spent the beginning of this month avoiding two questions: first, “Are you really writing a novel?” And, after I have reluctantly answered in the affirmative, “What’s it about?”

It’s November, which means, for thousands of participants, National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo for short. The goal is to write 50,000 words in on month—that’s 1,667 words every day for 30 days. Accomplishing this feat makes you a “winner” of NaNoWriMo.

So why am I so squeamish about revealing my novel-writing aspirations? My friends tell me that even attempting to write a novel at all is something admirable, even something about which to brag. Yet I can’t help but feel that any high schooler going around touting the fact that she’s in the process of creating some great work will sound irrevocably pretentious. Besides, admitting that, yes, I am writing a novel leads to the inevitable second question, and I am finding that explaining my plot is even harder than denying my literary activity.

I am of the opinion that to paraphrase any literary work is impossible and have often found this problematic when asked to summarize for an assignment. Summarizing my own work, especially when it’s unfinished and completely tangled from being written so quickly, is even more impossible. I think that written works are best appreciated in their purest form, that is, read, but I don’t really want anyone to read what I’ve written.

I do think that fast-paced, high-pressure “noveling,” as the founders of NaNoWriMo would say, is possibly the best way for an amateur  writer to start off. Let me tell you something about NaNo novels: they suck. All of them. No one can write a good novel in 30 days. So what NaNo does is level the playing field. The greatest challenge is not writing a meaningful, coherent story, but rather to reach the daily word quota, to just finish. The pep-talk writers, published authors who send out mass email to encourage participants to keep writing, constantly urge writers to just write something now and edit later.

The little kid in me, whose mother told her over and over again that nothing is perfect, really likes that concept. Just as no NaNo novel ends up perfect at the end of the month, no regular novel starts off perfect in its first draft. Authors, to borrow from teen-lit author Maureen Johnson, would spend their entire careers revising just one book if publishers would let them. That sort of perfectionism could easily intimidate a writer into never even pushing past the first hundred words.

Maybe I’m crazy for attempting to “win” NaNoWriMo. As a senior on the Speech and Debate team, November is the busiest month of the year. Right now, it’s paining me to devote 500-plus words to something other than my novel (right now I’m my word count is around 21,000, but I should be closer to 30,000). But before I end, let me answer a few more pesky questions: no, I’m not going to try to get this publish. No, you can’t read my novel. And, no, I’m still not going to tell you what my novel’s about.