Words fly fast during Novel Month

Jasper Kozak-Miller's masterwork "Elemension" was well underway when disaster struck. A computer glitch erased the latest draft of his novel.

He knew where to turn: Mom.

The 13-year-old's mother fixed the problem, and the budding novelist is again piling up the word count .

"I'm doing 1,000 per day during the week, 4,000 on Saturday, and 3,000 on Sunday," said Kozak-Miller, who attends Maria Baldwin School .

Kozak-Miller is one of many Cantabrigians taking part in the National Novel Writing Month, the goal of which is to write 50,000 words in November. Participants sign up online for free , then receive inspirational e-mails during the month, post problems in an online forum, and attend "write-ins," one of Jasper's favorite parts. He has attended two write-ins in Cambridge at Toscanini's in Central Square.

National Novel Writing Month's founder, Californian Chris Beattie , said the prize is "being able to go to a cocktail party and say, 'I write novels.' "

Travis Kelley , one of the Boston organizers, said that to make the 50,000-word count, one must write an average of 1,667 words per day, or about six typed, double-spaced pages. Participants' work is posted online regularly.

Kozak-Miller said it usually takes him about two hours to write his 1,000 words, but at the write-ins he completes double that amount in the same time.

"You get a lot done because you don't want to take a break with everyone else writing around you," he said.

At the last write-in he ran into a neighbor, his mother's friend Wally Holland , 27, whom he has known for years.

Holland described his own opus as "not great, but not bad." "I've never written anything this good," he said. "Even my master's thesis."

Holland has a master's degree from MIT in comparative media studies and does temporary work and freelance writing and editing during the day.

This month he hasn't had his usual number of gigs, which means more time for the novel. He's currently at 31,000 words.

His book is about a high school shooting , like Columbine, but the only students killed are jerks, and the rest of the students hold the killers up as folk heroes.

Holland said it started off as a satire, but now, "I actually care about the characters." He warned against high expectations for him and his fellow November novelists.

"This is not the next generation of Faulkners," Holland said, "though it may be the next generation of chick lit."

Jasper said he will continue to plug away. He has been influenced by Jonathan Stroud's "The Bartimaeus Trilogy," which he read this past summer. And he's a fan of Harry Potter, but said, "That's not my writing style."

His novel, "Elemension," is about six children who go to a school for magic and get separated by a mystical force. They search for the reason for the separation and discover someone has been controlling a dragon.

"I've written stuff before on my own accord," he said. "But not as much as I wanted to. This gets me used to writing so much prose every day."

Will he publish it?

"I don't know if I'm that good," he said. "I'm not going to die if I don't get it published. Maybe next year's book."