I. We think quicker than we write. Writing fast helps you catch up with your brain, empty your swollen imagination.

II. Breakneck writing is energizing and immersive. Once you’re into your story, you fall into enchantment, fall away from the ordinary world. When you take breaks for life’s necessities you long to come back to it. You ache for it like a first love.

III. For the comradery, support, and fun of being part of a giddy, committed world-wide  community of writers.

IV. To stretch and test yourself. May published authors, especially those who write series, have a NaNoWriMo schedule every month. Think about that.

V. Blazing, high-speed writing helps with consistency of voice, tone, and viewpoint. It creates fluidity as you live amid your story day after whizzing-past day.

VI. It teaches you to trust in the process.

VII. Anything is bearable for 30 days. Well, according to several women I know, bed rest with triplets is almost unbearable; but after November  your eye strain will ease, the dust piles can be vacuumed, your mate embraced with renewed affection.

VIII. Writing fast makes your brain limber.

IX. You’ll have more fun, you’ll stay loose and potent and nimble.

X. Because you owe to yourself, your muse and the stories locked in your imagination. You don’t want to carry around those untold stories like hungry ghosts scratching to escape.

XI. If not now, when? Next year? When you’re 30? Retired?

XII. Because all the changes in the publishing landscape means you need to learn to write at a quicker pace. The whole book biz is moving at lightning speed these days, so writing solid first drafts  as quickly as possible makes sense for beginning writers or have-not-yet-broken-through yet writers.  None of us can predict what a writing career will look like ten or twenty years from now, but creating a backlog of manuscripts is a wise move in these tumultuous times.