Its partisans say the challenge unleashes your creativity by muting your "inner editor" for a month, and that it is the only time of the year during which a lot of people allows themselves to write freely. Its detractors deplore that quantity is much more important to the challenge than quality, and that agents are not happy at all about the alleged influx of bad novels they receive through December.
Writers of Hubski, what do you think?
I think it's a good idea to challenge yourself and occasionally force yourself to create; whether it be music, art, literature etc. However, if you do this expecting to have a work of art at the end, you're likely in for a shock. My guess is that it could bare fruitful ideas that are worth exploring in a more disciplined way, with no contest involved. I'd say "do it" but do it for novelty's sake and not as a new method or work process.
I agree with you, especially on this point in particular: Anyone who thinks they can give the first draft of a novel that they wrote in the span of a month to an editor and think that things will go A-Ok are either clones of Ernest Hemmingway or highly delusional. This is in no way a slight to anyone who finishes a first draft - that is a great accomplishment and one that should be praised. But writing is a process that requires writing, writing, and rewriting. And that's before you even give it to an editor. Overall, I believe NaNoWriMo is a great kickstart for a novel, but it is a novel that is a mould of lumpy clay. It needs time to be refined and reshaped and placed in the kiln before it can be taken any further.agents are not happy at all about the alleged influx of bad novels they receive through December.
As a generative exercise, these kinds of things are ok, but simply writing will not help one get better at craft unless some awareness of craft is already present. I do think that they are good tools for showing people a little bit of the sheer immensity of hard work that can go into creating publishable work. If nothing else, this is a good way to disillusion people from thinking that writing is as easy as sitting down to put words on the page.
There's also CampNano in summer and spring. It's usually more laid-back and you get to set up your own wordcount goal.