Through the month of November, Jen Nipps participated in what has become an international event, National Novel Writing Month. She was kind enough to share her post-NaNoWriMo thoughts with us. Do you have any reflections post-NaNoWriMo to share?

Another National Novel Writing Month ended a few days ago. Whether I won or lost doesn’t matter, even though I do prefer to “win” (reach 50,000 words).

Regardless of whether or not I win, NaNoWriMo is a catalyst for getting a project started. I intend to use it to get the bones of a story down. After that, I can go back in and flesh out what is too lean and trim back on what has too much. If I don’t get it done, at the very least, I have more at the end of the month than I did before NaNoWriMo.

That’s the point of it, as far as I can tell: to be a catalyst. Even if you are a fast writer, chances are you can’t produce a completed, polished manuscript in 30 days.

Novels written quickly need work. They have plot holes that need to be filled, character discrepancies that need to be revised, and passive voice that needs to be activated, just to name a few things.

My current novel is half-way through the rough draft stage. At the rate I have been going, It will be done by Christmas. I had three false starts and one stall-out before I pulled it out again for NaNoWriMo.

At almost 30,000 words, I am leaps and bounds beyond where I was before NaNo. So, no, I did not win, but I “won” in that I have a great deal to work with in a story I like with characters that are well developed and (to my thinking) likeable.

“Jen Nipps is a freelance writer in south-central Oklahoma. She currently writes website reviews for the OWFI Report, the newsletter for the Oklahoma Writers’ Federation, Inc., and has been published in WritingForDollars. Progress notes on her work(s)-in-progress and other writing-related posts can be found on her blog, Creatif.”

How did you fair in NaNoWriMo this year? Did you ‘win’? More importantly, did you have fun and create unique?

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