Somehow, they keep coming.
I went to our first Tuesday night Orlando NaNoWriMo "support group" last night. There were over a dozen people there. Despite doing a lot of chatting, I still managed to write 2,428 words, with no more plot guidance beforehand than, "Evan manages to get off the ship in an escape pod and lands on a desolate planet; Evan gets a hint of the vast archaeological opportunities out here."
I'm not the only one cranking out words. The problem with the Internet is that it has essentially eliminated any barrier to entry for anyone who wants to publish anything. (Case in point: this blog.) I have a nagging fear that this trend is going to destroy literature, simply because the signal-to-noise ratio becomes so unfavorable that what good writing there is can't be located. The average quality goes down, which drives a feedback loop. Standards are lowered, performance drops accordingly, and we end up with 99% drivel.
I don't think this has actually happened yet, but I think it's in progress. (My work here isn't helping matters, I'm sure.)
With all these people putting out words, what's my chance of ever actually getting published? I'm beginning to think it's more a right-place, right-time / who-you-know situation than a quality-speaks-for-itself one. (Some of the best-selling authors nowadays are putting out what I consider junk...and it's not even technically edited well.) Then, there's always the argument that the Internet will eventually destroy the conventional publishing model, anyway. Or perhaps already has.
Bit of a nervous time for me as a prospective author. Still, I press on. These words won't write themselves...at least, not with today's technology.