"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.

These are words—a prime example of the sort of thing you're looking for

As the successful author of possibly the worst novel ever written, I've been invited to offer some advice on how to succeed in NaNoWriMo. Since this post is not itself a part of NaNoWriMo, I'll get right to it.

1) Steve, uncharacteristically, is right: attitude is everything. For my successful first attempt, I went in essentially decided that I would rather die than fail. For my unsuccessful second attempt, I went in thinking that it wouldn't be so bad if I didn't finish, because I'd already proven I could do it. Failure was thus assured.

2) Procrastinate. Okay, bear with me here. Procrastination gets a bad rap, and maybe that's fair, but the truth is that we all do it, because we need to do it. Unless you're some sort of scary writing machine, you're not going to be working on your novel during every waking moment. But when you're doing other things, make sure that you're procrastinating—consider any time that you aren't writing to be time that you should be writing. This will help build up enough guilt and tension to get your pens/keyboards rocking.

3) Be unemployed. This is bad advice for life, but good advice for crazy nonsense like NaNoWriMo. Any time you spend working is time you could be spending procrastinating. 

4) Have several/all of your characters swear profusely. It's a cheap way to easily pump up your word count, asshole, which is really the whole fucking point. If this sort of language isn't appropriate to your plot or setting, change your motherfucking plot and setting, you goddamn fucking piece of shit.

5) If possible, disable your delete key. Yes, it's difficult to avoid editing on the fly. I certainly can't manage it, but just try to remember: the whole point is to reach the finish line. Deleting words during NaNoWriMo is like going backwards in a marathon because you don't think you made that last turn gracefully enough.

6) When you're thinking about your story, write what you think. Trying to decide what your protagonist should do next? Have her call up her mom and talk about what she should do next. Your internal dialogue will make great (by which I mean "lengthy") actual dialogue.

7) When your plot is stuck, it's time for flashbacks! Aside from moving the word count in the right direction, exploring the backstory of a character (or world, or whatever) can help you learn something about said character(/world/whatever) that will help you as you move the story along. Plus, if there's some sort of thematic connection between the flashback and the character's current dilemma, it'll make you seem all deep and shit.

Plot, plot, plot, plot, plot ...

I know that the book is called No Plot, No Problem, but really what you need to get through is lots and lots of plot. Too much really. Want to do a character driven story? Well good luck with that, but I think that a good chunk of the character work needs to be sketched out ahead of time (which is kinda-sorta, but not really cheating) or done during the competition, in which case you're hemorrhaging time that could have been spent writing.

The reason I finished the first year was because I had lots of plot (I ended on a cliffhanger). The reason I failed the second year was that I didn't really have a plot. I just had a loose conflagration of concepts (also I had just moved across Canada).

Also, action scenes. No better way to waste 3000 words than having two dudes swing swords at each other.