As GalleyCat recovers from the National Book Awards, we should all cheer on the National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) writers pounding away this November. These writers have braved a depressing recession and chased their dream of writing 50,000 words in a month.

So far, NaNoWriMo writers have produced some 930,596,374 words. Assuming the average novel is 75,000 words, that's nearly 12,500 novels collectively written in 20 days.

Author Jessica Burkhart offered GalleyCat readers some encouragement:

"In 2006, at 20 years old, I participated in NaNo and wrote my first novel. I blogged about NaNo and that I was searching for an agent. In late December of that year, an agent stumbled upon my blog and asked to read my manuscript. I signed with her and she quickly sold my NaNoNovel as part of a four-book series to Simon & Schuster."