Quantity, Not Quality?

I wonder how many of you knew that this month, November, is National Novel Writing Month (also known as NaNoWriMo). The aim is for writers to crank out about 1,500 words a day in order to complete a novel by the end of the month. In other words, the emphasis is on quantity, not quality. Most writing manuals will tell us that the essence of writing is revision. But here we have, as the NaNoWriMo website explains, "a kamikaze approach {that} forces you to lower your expectations, take risks and write on the fly." The site even has a Procrastination Station that gives advice like "Plot while driving," which prompted the New York Times Book Review to question "Is that legal?" But the big surprise is that this crazy writing competition has actually given birtto at least one huge best-seller, Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen. Go figure!