"I'd like to encourage the rest of you to do the same at some point, whether or not you're taking part this year." - Steve Smith

Alright Steve, I suppose I'll weigh in on the whole "advice" subject.

First of all, a bit about me: My name is Adam and I am a two-time U of A NaNoWriMo winner. My first novel was titled Broken Wings and the second one was titled Al's War. I have no "training" or "credentials" when it comes to writing. I was a subpar university student at best. During the writing of both my novels, I was employed full-time. Why am I telling you this? Because if a dope like me can do it, and was able to find the time to do it, then it should be fairly easy for anyone. The only thing is you need to be stubborn enough to see it through to the end.

1) Follow Steve and Jake's advice. It's all good stuff and helped me a lot during my first attempt (except Jake's bit about being unemployed, but it does help.) Even the stuff they wrote during their failed second attempts in 2007 helped me avoid some of the pitfalls past NaNoWriMo winners experience during my own second attempt. Amanda, Daniel and Chris also make some good points.

2) Don't sweat the mid-month doldrums. Know this: your first and last seven days of the month will be your most productive. In the second and third weeks, you will notice that your productivity will crater and you will begin to despair. This is normal. During the first week, you have a bunch of fresh ideas and are motivated by the fact that this novel attempt has gone further than any previous attempt. After this, you will begin to compile a mental list of all the things you would rather do than write your novel. Believe me: this list will be quite long.

3) Don't restart. Ever. If you so much as delete one written word during the month, shame on you for not knowing the meaning of a first draft novel. Even if you hate your plot and all your characters, there are ways around this. Make them suffer. Kill them off. Do something creative that doesn't involve a reduction in your word count. You'll be much better off. During NaNoWriMo, you will come up with a lot of ideas you would rather write than the one you're currently working on. Put them out of your mind because they will tempt you and drive you crazy.

4) Don't go in thinking that even if you don't finish your novel by the end of the month, you have a good start and you can always finish your novel at some other time. It's as simple as this: if you're not motivated enough to finish the thing in one month, then you never will. Your novel will sit in your documents folder for all eternity, never to be seen or heard from again.

5) Keep track of your daily word count, even the days when you accomplish no writing at all. I used a spreadsheet which calculated how many words were left, and the number of words I needed to write per day in order to finish on time. This allowed me to see just how far behind I was falling and kept my sense of urgency at a high enough level.

6) Write about what you know. It's common sense, but it seems common sense is not all that common. In Broken Wings, my protagonist was a pilot and a football player, which I know a fair bit about. In Al's War, my protagonist and I shared the same occupation, but he was also a hockey goalie who takes a trip to Australia. At the time, I knew nothing about playing goalie(or very much about playing hockey at all...) and hardly anything about Australia, so I spent far too much time researching both subjects. As a result, I fell way behind in my writing. If you must write about something you know nothing about, just make stuff up. For example, Steve had Department of Oceans and Fisheries vehicles with lights and sirens on them, simply because his story needed them to.