People who think NaNoWriMo is a magic ticket to publication

There are many reasons why NaNoWriMo is an incredibly useful exercise (it helps people get from "having done some writing" to "having written a novel" even if that novel is still short, rough and unpublishable; it helps people write without worrying that it's not perfect, and thence learn about their writing style as a prerequisite to actually improving it; it's fun; for more practised authors, published or not, it's an excuse to work in a blitz with lots of moral support; etc).

There are also many reasons why NaNoWriMo is unlikely to immediately produce a publishable novel (most novel are longer than 50k words; most authors can't write a nearly publishable first draft but need extensive reworking, typically many times as much work again as writing the first draft).

But as far as I can see -- all these are pretty obvious to most people, professional and amateur alike, and pretty clear from NaNoWriMo FAQs.

But AGAIN and AGAIN and AGAIN, I hear a conversation that goes like this:

A: Ha! I'm doing a NaNoWriMo novel. Then I'll be a rich published author and you'll all bow down to me.
B: You idiot, it doesn't work like that. NaNoWriMo is fooling people into thinking this! Evil!

Except that I've never met anyone, ever, who DOES think (A). I just hear endless whining from people think people do, and then lay into the NaNoWriMo concept. It's like criticising amateur football for not being professional football. No, it's not, but everyone seems happy with what it is, and some people do progress to professional football -- and pretty much no-one progresses to professional status from anywhere EXCEPT amateur status.

Test draft of my gentlemen magicians magic set

If anyone who is not already on toothywiki is interested, I'm going to invite people to test-draft my invented magic set, signing up at http://www.toothycat.net/wiki/wiki.pl?GentlemenMagicians/Draft.

(I don't really recommend that if you've not played magic before, but you'd be welcome to try if you like.)

Unsolicited personal advice

Premises:

1. This person has a problem.
2. I find this problem easy to fix in my own life.
3. Everyone is exactly the same as me.
4. Therefore this person WOULD find it easy to fix if they knew about it.
5. Therefore they DON'T know about it.
6. Therefore all I have to do is tell them, and they'll instantly reform, be happy, and shower me with gratitude.
7. Oh no, it didn't work out like that :( What's wrong?

Spot the mistake? Step 3. If someone is genuinely unaware that they have a problem (typically something urgent and immediate) then telling them may genuinely fix everything. If they're refusing to admit they have a problem, then telling them may eventually get through (although not necessarily).

But often, it's not that someone doesn't KNOW they have a problem, it's that even if they do they don't find it easy to fix it even if you would. Either for an objective physical reason (eg. find it hard to get fit because a medical condition makes it much harder to exercise) or an internal reason (eg. they're panicked and don't know where to start and don't dare face it). Even if it's not obvious by looking at them.

In which case saying "it's easy to fix you should start by doing [several easy things]" may help (if you know their situation well enough to know what the things are), but saying "it's really urgent" is likely to only make them feel more dejected about the problem.

This is the problem with, for instance, going up to people in the street and saying they should exercise more, even discounting that they may have some good reason for not doing so, or some good reason for not needing to, even if they WOULD like to, even if you're right, it's unlikely to be what they need to hear.

ETA: This was originally going to be a cartoon with a little whistling dude who didn't know he had a problem and a little "la la la" dude who didn't admit it and a little flailing dude who didn't know how to fix it. But it seemed too complicated for a cartoon :)