NaNoW­riMo: Assum­ing you know what it is, you either love it or hate it.

For those of you who don’t have a clue what I’m talk­ing about, NaNoW­riMo is National Novel Writ­ing Month, the annual word fest wherein par­tic­i­pants com­mit to writ­ing 50,000 words of a new novel between Novem­ber 1 and Novem­ber 30. Since its launch in 1999, NaNoW­riMo has exploded, going from 21 par­tic­i­pants to—get this—250,000.

Now at this par­tic­u­lar point in my life, I have close to zero inter­est in writ­ing a novel (been there, done that). I do, how­ever, have high hopes for this lit­tle blog o’ mine.

So here’s what I plan to do: Dur­ing the month of Decem­ber, I’m going to com­mit to draft­ing a post every day. They won’t appear every day—that would likely drive you nuts—but they’ll be in the pipeline for when the time comes. That’s 31 posts in all, and if I do this—or even come any­where close—it will mark a quan­tum leap for this tiny baby blog.

Great, but it’s only Novem­ber 20. Why am I telling you this?

Here’s a secret: Any­thing I write between now and Decem­ber 1 still counts towards my 31 posts. I admit it–I cheat. In fair­ness, Decem­ber is a hol­i­day month, so I know there will be some down days. (Also, chances are some of these posts will need some, er, pol­ish­ing before they’re ready for you.)

I’m a big fan of plans like this. This is how, in another life­time, I wrote (and pub­lished) my two nov­els. My goal was 500 words a day—about two double-spaced pages. And while I didn’t always meet the goal (in fact, far from it), I did track my progress, and that made all the difference.

The pro­lific Vic­to­rian nov­el­ist Anthony Trol­lope, who I recently dis­cov­ered used a sim­i­lar strat­egy, put it this way: “[I]f at any time I have slipped into idle­ness for a day or two, the record of that idle­ness has been there, star­ing me in the face and demand­ing of me increased labour, so that the defi­ciency might be supplied.”

Com­mu­nity sup­port always helps—that’s the pur­pose of NaNoWriMo—and I’d love it if you would join me. Here’s how it works: Pick a project you want to get done and set a daily doable goal. For exam­ple, if you want to clean and de-clutter your house—Now why would I think of that?–you could com­mit to toss­ing three items a day. If you want to get in shape, com­mit to 30 min­utes of exer­cise a day.

Tip: Try to keep your goals reasonable—and if you find you’ve set the bar too high, don’t be afraid to adjust.

If you’re on Twit­ter you can send your updates to @planbnation with the hash­tag  #naper­promo. Or feel free to post your progress on the Plan B Nation Face­book wall or com­ment on this post. I’ll be doing the same. I hope to see you there!

Note: Any­one who feels like a slacker for opt­ing out of NaNoW­riMo this year can take com­fort in best­selling writer (and cyber pal) Laura Zigman’s witty take on the project—part of her ter­rific Annoy­ing Con­ver­sa­tions series of Xtra­nor­mal movies. (And if you are doing NaNoW­riMo, best of luck. I’m quite sure you’ll be an exception.)