Want to finish your book? Make the commitment. Then make it real.

Back in the day, I used to work for one of NaNoWriMo’s sponsors. We were encouraged to sign up for NaNoWriMo and try to participate so we understood what the event was about when customers came to us with questions. I dutifully signed up and joked about writing a novel in a month with co-workers but never wrote so much as a word year after year.

But 2007 was different. While the process of signing up wasn’t any different than any past year, it felt different to me because this time I was real...