As the sands of time wind down and the dreary days of November slip away, would-be novelist Kyall Glennie of Regina isn't worrying at all about bad writing.

As one of 70,000 people around the world participating in National Novel Writing Month — 72 of them in Saskatchewan — he's thinking about quantity, not quality.

'Make no mistake: You will be writing a lot of crap. And that's a good thing.'— National Novel Writing Month website

By midnight, Nov. 30, he has to come up with a 50,000-word novel and although he's been making steady progress on it, he expects to hold some marathon writing sessions in the days ahead.

"Today, I have 2,500 words to catch up from the last two days and another 1,600 that I have to write, so I'm just over 4,000 words that I have to write today," said the 20-something Glennie, who has previously published a book of poems.

The National Novel Writing Month writers are registered on a website that makes no bones about its mission.

"Make no mistake: You will be writing a lot of crap," the site says. "And that's a good thing. By forcing yourself to write so intensely, you are giving yourself permission to make mistakes. To forgo the endless tweaking and editing and just create."

Glennie said he's learned it's important to write scenes requiring a lot of description, because description is a space-filler. Likewise, dialogue is all about the word count, he said.

'After 10,000 words you are going to want to drop out, but you know what? No other time in your life are you going to sit down and write a book.'—would-be novelist Kyall Glennie

"They don't have to solve the problems of the world in their conversation, but they have to do something that equals words on a page," Glennie said.

He has words of encouragement for anybody hoping to follow in his footsteps. 

"Don't worry, it's going to be a terrible book. Don't worry, you are not going to like it," he said. "After 10,000 words you are going to want to drop out, but you know what? No other time in your life are you going to sit down and write a book."

After the word-count requirement is met, the winter months are to be used to edit. People who reach the 50,000-word mark receive a certificate and their name on an honour roll.

There's no cash prize to shoot for, but there is one perk that's keeping many glued to their word processors — as of Dec. 1, they can start calling themselves novelists.

Last year, there were 59,000 participants and 9,769 winners.