A Men. Writing month? I would join in that! sounds like fun!

I think that, like FanFic, NaNoWriMo has value primarily as a teaching tool. In FanFic, you get to take other people's established characters and world, and write with them to learn about the craft of writing, without having to do world building or come up with your own characters.

In NaNoWriMo, it's all about getting words on paper. That, for many people, is the hardest part of writing... just getting the words out, without telling yourself that it's all cruddy, without editing, etc. But neither FanFic nor NaNoWriMo will make you a published author on their own.

You have to keep with it... and take the next steps, which are editing, polishing, and, if you think you're ready, submitting. If you have something you don't think is quite ready for a regular publisher, but you'd like to have something to show your friends, you can take a look at lulu.com (I have no interest in Lulu other than having published a book there), where they'll publish your work at no cost to you, unless of course, you buy a copy.

If you want a professional editor / proof reader, let me know... I have a friend who does that. She's not cheap, but she's worth the money!

You are completely right Walkyrie, that is exactly what NaNoWriMo is. I can't count how many peptalks that came from published authors on NaNo said that the hardest part of a novel was getting it down on paper.

I think the hardest thing for people doing NaNoWriMo is convincing yourself not to be stopped by how crappy your story is going. Just let it do it's thing, you can back and reign in the story and get the characters back on track later. I'm in the process of writing my first NaNo and it is miles different from the original copy. But writing the original gave me a chance to see where these events would take it and also proved to me that I am capable of writing that much. Whether I am capable of publishing or not is a whole other story.

If you guys are still interested, I've started up MeNoWriMo.

Check it out: Here