The point of my copious long-distance running analogy was this: why aim to do a marathon, a novel, or indeed anything, rapidly but badly?

I only reprimanded you for your notion of unquantifiable subsequent potential because your previous argument seemed so heavily couched in quantifiability, discarding my “8,000 good words” as something ethereal and impossible to know you’ve achieved. Are you out for pure quantity? If so, “In addition, going back and improving, drawing from, or changing that work can produce something that is worthy of merit…” is totally invalid. If not, why are you doing NaNoWriMo?

As I’ve said before, if you only want to do it for fun, the motive itself is point enough. It just seems a shame when you could produce something else (it need not even be words) to a similar arbitrary deadline, enjoy the process, and actually have something nice at the end.

However, I still find the whole “made-up targets” affair depressing in the same way new year’s resolutions are depressing; why does it take the beginning of another unit of time, which humans have delimited into orbital periods of the planet we happen to be on, to spur people into action on something they should care to do anyway?

And I’m somewhat heartened that what you wrote wasn’t intended as personally insulting: however, you must realise that, after a comment loaded with sarcasm, phrases such as “That you cannot understand this makes me very sorry for you…and I don’t know how I would go about changing that, even if I cared to: which, in the greater part, I don’t” could at least be construed as slightly patronising!