In my experience, it's never to early to prepare for NaNo! I'm planning my story for it now!

In order for your word count to register on the site and for you to be listed as one of the official winners of NaNo and get the cool 'NaNo Winner' stuff then you have to create an account with the site. However, if you don't want to do this and simply do your word count as a challenge to yourself then yo obviously don't have to create an account.

I would recommend doing NaNo to anyone, especially if you have never finished a novel before. I hadn't finished a single story until I did my first NaNo last year and I've now managed to work out how to keep myself interested in a story right up until the final chapters.

I hope you decide to do it, it's so much fun and so worth the late nights typing!

Additionally posting your story on NaNoWriMo site, is not at all like posting a story on Protagonize. In fact you can change all the letters to a if you like, so long as you keep all the spaces that let it know where each word breaks. Essentially posting your story to the NaNo site is like sending a copy of it into a shreader that counts the words as it gobbles the paper up. (okay that's an odd metephore, but I think it works.)

Anyway...

NaNo is tones of fun. Especially when you can get to the Write-Ins, which is where small to large numbers on NaNo writers gather to spend a few hours typing in comparible silence with other writers, and sometimes challengeing each other to word count races. It might sound odd, but you have to go to one to feel the power of it all. Just hearing others typing away keeps you going.

In fact tomorrow I"m going to meet up with a little group that got going basedupon that whole Write-In premis. We often don't talk, but rather enjoy the silence as we type amicably on our own works.

:} Elorithryn

Heh I don't need to clarify, Elori beat me too it. What she said is correct, and that's a really good analogy (that I may need to steal ;))

You can post excerpts of your WIP on your profile, and paragraphs you aren't sure about in the forums for peer review, but you don't have to. The only thing I would say that is mandatory is (if you want the goodies anyway) into the official word counter. This is a good explanation of how to scramble your novel if you're a bit unsure about copying the novel into the word validator.

When it comes to signing up, I'd do it at the start of October, since there will be less lag than on 1st November. Also I'd stay away from the site at peak times in the first week, again due to laaaag. Though there was talk they got it fixed for this year...

I've never scrambled my novel before submitting it so I'm not sure what it does, but I do know that uncompleted novels are accepted at the end of NaNo as long as you've hit 50K. Last year I was on about 60K by the end of the month and my novel still wasn't finished but I counted as a winner because I'd hit the word count.

I've done so since like 2007 or 2008, but i dont think i've ever reached the 50,000 mark. I work so much damned overtime that it's hard to do so in one month. So this time around i'm doing all my plotting, character development, outlines...everything you can think of way before Nov 1st hits that way hopefully I can get it finished this time around

It'll be my first go to :)

I've just signed up for an account though I doubt anything I write that quickly will be worth seeing.

@Trish

Agreed. I highly doubt I'll be able to do the word goal as I will have college and I just realised how many pages that is on a word document *gulp*. Oh well it'll be fun :)