I am extremely not a fan of NaNoWriMo.

You're outlining exactly what's wrong with it - "if I vomit words on a page I will have a book." And you're outlining exactly why it's wrong - "is this real life?"

If you folded a thousand paper cranes, at least you'd have a thousand paper cranes when you were done. You could put them on a wall and people would go "cool! A thousand paper cranes! That must have been a lot of work!" If you knitted a blanket, you could wrap yourself up in it and go "and now I have something to keep myself warm." More importantly, if that blanket started to look like ass you'd go "hmm. I should probably start the last eight rows over because this thing is starting to look like a fishing net." But with NanoWriMo it's always about "oh god don't revise or else you'll never make it to our arbitrary goal!"

Thing of it is? You're either going to know better than to subject your friends to your "novel" or you're going to make things awkward. Either way, nobody is going to enjoy it. And here you are, putting the weight of the world on a ridiculous word-vomit draft that has nothing whatsoever to do with your core competencies, because everyone is doing it.

Has it ever struck you as weird that there's no "national novel reading month?"