What to expect if it's your first NaNoWriMo

You decided to sign up for your very first NaNoWriMo.  Congratulations!  You have guts for signing up for such a difficult challenge and also for putting it out on the line and making the month long commitment.

If it's your first time, you're probably wondering what to expect when November 1 actually starts.  Let's go over a few things in a handy list:

The NaNoWriMo website will be down for almost the entire first week.  You'll hear this and you won't believe it but, trust me, the NaNoWriMo website will be broken, buggy, slow or just plain down for the first few days of the competition if not the entire first week.  I know it's tempting to want to visit the forums and update your word count every 5 seconds in the first week of the competition, but do your part and try to stay off the website whenever possible so the poor servers get a break.
Any NaNoWriMo related web site will also probably be either down or significantly slowed during the first week.  Any website that mentions NaNoWriMo will, by extension, also be down that first week.  NaNoWriMo advice, word count widgets, novel writing software, any site tangentially related to the competition will probably also be experiencing serious traffic issues in that first week.
You'll probably feel a little overwhelmed.  After all the anticipation, the beginning of NaNoWriMo can sometimes be killer on your creativity.  You'll be staring and that blank page with this feeling that all of your ideas have completely left you and you have absolutely no idea where to start.  Believe it or not that's totally normal.  I've been doing is competition for for several years now and every time the month starts I feel that same raw terror so don't worry.  You're in good company. 
It's both fun and hard.  You'll hear two different voices throughout the contest.  The people for whom it's going great will tell you the NaNoWriMo is nothing but fun.  Some of these people will hit their 50,000 word count within the first day or so of the competition.  The people that are having trouble will tell you that NaNoWriMo is hell and impossible and way too difficult.  Many of those people will quit long before they reach 50,000 words.  Unfortunately, they're both right.  NaNoWriMo is what you make of it.  It can be a ton of fun and a creative flurry or it can also be absolute hell, if you let it be.  In the end, it all depends on your attitude.  Focus on the fun and what you trying to accomplish and try not to let stress overwhelm you.
A novel is much longer than you think it is.  At some point over the course of the month, 50,000 words is going to feel like an impossible amount to write, every word like drawing blood.  There are also going to be days when you're sitting there saying, "I really only have to write 50,000 words? That's it?" because your writing that day is going so well.  You'll also invariably realize that your story is not exactly 50,000 words long, few stories are. You'll find this is true of any kind of writing, even outside of NaNoWriMo.  In fact, I think this is the most important lesson NaNoWriMo has to teach new writers.  To grow and change as a writer, you really need to understand just how long and how short a book can feel and then exactly how long it takes you to actually tell it.  There are some writing lessons the you can only learn by writing a novel and getting all the way to the end.

I think that pretty much covers everything you might not be prepared for as a first timer.  If you have any questions, or if any NaNoWriMo veterans want to weigh in with additional advice, please add your thoughts below and the comments.

Happy noveling everyone!

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