It’s November, which means thousands of aspiring writers are telling their friends and family to go amuse themselves for a while. They’ve got a novel to write.

But, it’s been a bit of a rocky start for the NaNoWriMo crowd. For the uninitiated, National Novel Writing Month is that special time of year where anyone who likes makes a run at writing 50,000 words in 30 days. That’s like, 1700 words a day. Which is like, 3-4 pages. Every day. It’s a monumental task, especially when you consider that most of these people aren’t professional writers and mostly have day jobs, families, social obligations… It’s one thing for the pros who participate (who all seem to finish early) but your average aspiring writer is missing that most precious commodity… time.

Which is why Laura Miller’s post on Salon is so… puzzling. She basically goes after NaNoWriMo with both barrels– I’ll get to specifics of her argument in a moment. In addition to her high-profile attack, I get the sense that there’s a bit of push back in the air this year. Galleycat this morning went after first time fantasy novelists with a funny post about what not to do. It’s hard to argue with a lot of the points, but something about the principle just seemed off to me.
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