I’m one of those writers who’s “won” NaNoWriMo for several years. I’ve also been able to take two of those works and turn them into fully (self)-published novels, with a third on track for release later this year.

I’ve found that NaNoWriMo is a great way to jump-start a story. It’s the intermediate step between my rudimentary plotting (using Shaunta’s H2DSI) and a complete, publishable story. Since it’s always easier to edit an existing document, NaNoWriMo gives me that first, very rough, draft.

I realized from the first foray into NaNoWriMo, that my draft was incomplete. My characters are too flat, in too many places I need to turn a single paragraph of “telling” into a chapter of “showing,”and there’s little time/space for realized subplots in 50,000 words.

But — and this is the biggie for me — all of that is fixable. Usually by the first of December, I have everything necessary for a real novel: a cast of characters, a time and place for them to live, and, most important, a complete story, beginning, middle, and end. “Winning” gives me something I can mold into a book I would be willing to release onto an unsuspecting world.

For me, is kind of like having a baby: one month of intensity, followed by a year of hard work to birth something special.