You could start now, but it would defeat the purpose of participating in NaNoWriMo, so why bother? The community becomes a wealth of information from Oct to Dec. Ideas flow, challenges are taken up/given...it's just a fantastic community feel to the whole thing, with everyone struggling to paddle the same boat. They have 'in person' kick-off parties and 'It's finally over' parties (usually in the larger centre's), and last year they had city challenges where whole cities competed for greatest word count with another city. And as a bonus, they added a podcast with a celebrity reader. One lucky person got a portion of their NaNo novel read out for everyone to hear. The celebrity reader for 2005 was Will Weaton (for those die-hard trekkies out there).
It doesn't matter if you finish or not. No thugs are going to track you down if you only make it to 20k. It's totally free to participate, but if you're feeling particularly generous, you can donate something to the cause. Each year the funds raised go to building libraries for children in developing countries. It's all explained on the NaNo
website. I believe it's also a tax write off, but you'd have to read for yourself to be sure. Chris Baty is the founder of NaNoWriMo if you want to look him up. Radio broadcasters in several countries have reported on NaNo, and some school's have participated as a class. It's no small thing, this NaNo. There are thousands of participants each November.
And for anyone still wondering, Crazy Dude's post was about
last year's NaNo. He finished the
2005 NaNo challenge. It was an old post.
