NaNoWriMo

I am once again attempting National Novel Writing Month, in which one pledges to write a 50,000 word novel in 30 days. While I'm doing better than I did the last time I started NaNoWriMo, I'm still way behind. To be on track, I think I'd need to have written 20,000 words by today. I've got about 9,000. I have no plot, and not a whole lot of characters or setting, either. In fact, I'm so desperate that my narrator is spending significant amounts of time starting and discarding novels--steampunk, alien invasion, detective story. I'm filling up space by incorporating random writing prompts. This is not so much a novel as a series of 200-400 word exercises. I keep reminding myself, Quantity, not quality! but the quantity part is also daunting.