I'm torn about what I think of this. On the one hand, it's an interesting way to buckle down and write the damn book you always said you'd write. On the other hand, one can assume that 90% of the work created out of this experiment will be unreadable crap (not from the three of you I just mentioned, of course!), and that this crap will be foisted off for criticism (ie praise) on beleagered spouses and friends by the novelists. That seems like a Bad Thing. Also, won't most of the people who attempt this fail to meet the deadline? Even if the deadline is sorta unrealistic, I can see writers being very upset that they didn't finish, especially if their friends do (even if their friend's novel sucks anyway).
I'm going to resist this meme for a couple reasons:
1) if I was to write a book, my first choice would be to write non-fiction. I doubt I could research, much less write, a non-fiction book in a month.
2) I don't have the time to devote to it. Hell, I'm typing up this LJ entry when I should be finishing a 1000 word article (current count: 577 words) due on Tuesday. If I can't thrash out an article more quickly and am getting this easily sidetracked, how the hell can I expect to have the discipline to sit down and write a novel?
What do you think about NaNoWriMo?
Now, back to this damn article that I need to finish before I get dressed for Don's party