Tomorrow, November 1, marks the start of the annual National Novel Writing Month, where a bunch of people with too much time on their hands (last year there were more than 100,000 participants) attempt to write a 175-page novel in a month.

Sci-fi author Charles Stross is planning to use the event to kick-start his new novel The Trade of Queens. "The idea is to hold your feet to the fire of an actual word count and grind out the prose (which is the hurdle at which most would-be novelists stumble)," he blogs. "Getting 50K words down in November would be a good start, so I'm going to do that. If I seem somewhat optimistic, that's because I managed to write a 102,000-word first draft in 33 days last month." The new book, incidentally, has an interesting premise, so come on Charlie, get writing.

I don't know if any of you are going to give it a go but keep me updated on your progress if you are – I've decided to use it to fulfil my longheld ambition of writing a Mills & Boon novel (and now I've written that here, I'm actually going to have to do it). Perhaps queen of romance Danielle Steel will be posting a few tips on her new blog. Anyway, here goes.