Getting Ready for NaNoWriMo?

Lit agent Janet Reid, pictured above, circa Dec. 2

National Novel Writing Month is seventeen days away. As I'm sure you know, the project aims to get tens of thousands of people around the world writing 1,666 words a day (every day, which means laptops perched on Thanksgiving tables) to complete a 50,000-word manuscript inside a single month. I've never tried it, but I'm planning to this time--in fact I'm cheating a little: I've already got 20,000 words written, and a solid outline, so I'm not starting from scratch.

I've heard tell that literary agents dread December because they're deluged with queries