Remember group projects in school? I’m betting if you do, it’s because you were either a kid who ended up doing 99.8% of the work. Or a kid who instantly breathed a sigh of relief when that kid landed in your group. Then promptly forgot the project existed.

I’m not here to shame you if you were the latter. I barely care if you do your homework now, for this whole novel writing month thing. Why would I care about what you did as a kid? Lots of those kids were dealing with heavy stuff behind the scenes. Maybe you didn’t have the bandwidth. Maybe you figured Captain Overachiever didn’t really want you screwing up their project. And ultimately, the long-term value of high school homework is nonexistent.

I’m aware that the 99.8% kids are positively fuming at me right now. I was one of those kids. The thing is… I liked doing the work. Still do. I liked learning things. Enjoyed planning stuff. I loved reading and writing. I even liked building stuff out of posterboard, salt dough, and scotch tape. If anyone was getting cheated, it was the kids who didn’t get to do all that fun (and ultimately pointless) busywork.

Much of adult life is pointless busywork. Most of it is not as fun as making a papier-mâché model of a motte-and-bailey castle or a diorama of a Native American village.

You chose this.

If you’re doing this novel writing month thing, you have volunteered for an entirely unnecessary homework project. I am not going to tell you how to do it. If your plans include using a chatbot to churn out large swaths of prose? Maybe ask yourself if you’re cheating yourself out of the fun and joyful part of this. Would the kid version of you – whichever kid that was – think that was lame?

(Not that you should let the kid version of you make all your decisions. That is literally why therapy exists).

Many things are more fun when you do it with other people. Writing a novel in a month is not necessarily one of those things. So if you wanted to do this with a friend, or a group of friends, but nobody else seems into it? Well, looks like you have inherited the cape, Captain Overachiever. The glory is all yours.

Some things are fun while you’re doing them, and some things are fun to talk about once you’ve done them. I don’t know which one writing a novel will be for you. Maybe neither. Maybe both? You don’t know either, until you do it.

But nobody is going to make you do it, and nobody will do it for you.

Now open your stupid draft, and do the thing.