First of all, when I wrote my first one last year, I started over a week late and did it almost entirely by hand while I was in field training for the Army. I finished with about 30 minutes to spare, but you know what that means? It means you can do it!
Second - I had NO names for my characters, on only a vague idea of the details of my story. All I knew was this one guy in this one place somewhere in the desert is going to do this one thing and then go rescue his fiance. Granted, it is a make believe culture that I had begun to develop over a year ago, so that was an advantage, but I just started writing and look where it took me! I am writing the sequel this year, which is also an advantage since the background is already set up, but I'm at 23000 words already. Here are some tips:
First of all - you don't need to know everything exactly the way it's gonna happen - you don't even need to name the people that suddenly pop up in your story - you can do that later. Just write.
Second - fluff is great! others call it word padding. When you are at a loss for what to do, take some time to write nearly unrelated whatever. For example, I wrote a whole chapter describing the lay out of the typical city in my country. And I spent at least a page describing the bugs my character encountered as he was walking through a grassland. I spent at least two pages on at least two occasions, describing my character's experience of waking up. I also on a regular basis, refer back to previous events, which if given in detail, use up a LOT of words. I.E. My character reflects back on something, or is reminded by the strangest thing of something that happened yesterday, or last month.
Third - LOTS of adjectives, and adverbs. Describe EVERYTHING. it's not just grass. It's a soft, green carpet of grass glistening in the morning sunlight as the rays reflect off the diamond like dew drops on every leaf. That's a little extreme, but it can be other things like, instead of stone, it's grey stone, worn stone, rough stone, grey stone worn by years of exposure to the elements, fierce winds and driving rain that battered them year after year. For adverbs (which I'm not as good at) - he ran hard, she spoke softly, the leaves tumbled and skittered wildly across the cobbles, chased by a bitterly persisting autumn gale.
Fourth - Winging it is exactly what NaNoWriMo is all about. You don't need to do the research now, you can do it later. You can edit later, don't waste your time with that this month. November is just about getting the words down on a page, once that's done, you have all year to edit to your heart's content, or to expand on it if you like. Make it up as you go!
