Since this is my first NaNoWriMo, and honestly my first attempt at writing ANY fiction since high school, I don't yet know all the benefits of doing NaNoWriMo. What I can tell you is that already the idea that doing something, even though it's not perfect, has already had a positive effect for me.
I'm a web designer during the day, and what got me started doing it professionally was just me messing around with my own personal web site. Almost since graduating college, my site has been offline because i wanted it to be perfect. Since I was doing web design during the work day every day, my skills were improving and it made me unhappy with my site. It turned into a never ending redesign that eventually I just took down all together because I thought having nothing up there was better then what I had. So it's been offline at least for the last 4 to 5 years.
Recently I've really wanted to get it going again and had the whole design basically done and just needed to start adding things. But again, I didn't want to turn it on to the world until I had lots of stuff up there and everything was perfect.
After finding NaNoWriMo, I realized that I'd rather have what I've done so far visible to the world, and build on it to make it better. Why wait endlessly for time to finish every possible idea I've had when that time may never come?
So I did it! I finished up some of the bare necessities in the last couple night and have put it online! It's basically just a blog right now, but I made a category for NaNoWriMo and am going to journal my progress throughout the month.
I'm sure there are going to be a lot more benefits from this endeavor, but I'm already liking what i'm seeing! If you feel like checking out my journal you can visit www.cyberbobcity.com.
When December comes, hopefully I'll not only have my first novel, but a diary of my experiences writing it!
----------Bobby B.
161,514 / 50,000
Oct 30, 2010 - 07 21
I enjoy November so much more than I did before I started doing NaNoWriMo. It can be a dreary month in the midwest (although with some gorgeous days that are just great for taking a walk and resting fingers inside warm, cozy gloves.) Having a consuming goal makes November fly by.
I've always been able to write fairly fast, but NaNo has shown me that I can write faster than I thought possible, and enabled me to take risks with my writing. What the heck? It's only for a month, so if it doesn't work out, I haven't wasted months or even years of effort. (I have a novel that took me ten years to finish the first draft. Granted, I started it right after my second child was born and had a coauthor and we only meet once a week and he always said, 'now you do that writing stuff' when we hit a treaky part. But, still, ten years and it was still only a first draft.)
Three years ago, a few days before the start of NaNo, I thought, 'what if I told part of the story from the French boss's POV?' I wasn't sure I'd be able to carry off a 30-something French woman, but readers of the finished book at critiquecircle.com have wondered if I'm a French woman living in America or an American woman living in France. Wow.
Two years ago, I thought, 'wouldn't it be interesting to have the entire novel take place in 24 hours?' It was. (According to my husband (FinBarrMcG) it's my best novel to date.)
With both attempts, I was ready to abandon them if I got stuck, but they never got in the way of the story I was trying to tell and in both cases made the novel better.
Last year, in case you're wondering, my what if was 'what if I tried to write two novels in one month?' I did it, but the second one still needs tons of work.
This year's what if? What if 'work' was a POV character? (One of three.) I'm very excited to see how it turns out, and prepared to edit it out later if it doesn't work, but I think it will add depth. We'll see. That's part of the joy of NaNo. In only a month, we'll see what we've done.
67,456 / 50,000
Oct 30, 2010 - 05 18
For me, the greatest benefit of participating in NaNo is getting to exercise my right brain (link goes to an interesting online test that measures your right brain/left brain percentages). My work at Alcatel-Lucent is strongly left-brain oriented (I am a Senior Software Technologist there) and NaNo allows me to enjoy writing creatively (right brain).
I would note that authors who want to publish their work should consider being careful with posting it online; doing so can give away your first publication rights (which is what authors sell to publishers).
--Tim
----------1,103 / 50,000
Oct 30, 2010 - 04 26
So, I see I'm not the only designer that constantly makes one new site after another.
What I usually do is have a live site, and then I work on the next version in a subdirectory, and eventually I get so tired of the live one it motivates me enough to finish up the new version so I can make it live. Never ending cycle, my current site is v26, v25 never even saw the light of day because I worked on it for awhile and ended up not liking it at all.
6,783 / 50,000
Oct 29, 2010 - 21 59
I could use a little of that.
----------Bobby B.
109,919 / 50,000
Oct 29, 2010 - 21 41
I think the greatest thing NaNo gives you is discipline. There's something to be said for having the discipline to put Butt In Chair and do that work, regardless of how much you don't feel like writing that day. Even if you're sick, tired, or not motivated, it's nice to look back over the work you did that day and think "I still created something, even if I didn't feel like it." The discipline is a good skill to constantly improve on. I find I create the best scenes when I really didn't feel like writing prior to getting into the scene.
----------VENOMOID
a venomoid is a poisonous snake that has had its fangs and venom glands removed to make it safe for human handling. what if vampires were required to undergo this operation? [[Wrote THE END! 9 AM on 11/19/2010]]
50,233 / 50,000
Oct 29, 2010 - 18 23
That reminded me of back in the day when every site had one of those "Under Construction" images on it before web designers realized that nothing will ever be completely finished.
Anyways, I did NaNo last year and the biggest benifit I found was that NaNo gave me a good excuse to tell people when I wanted to write instead of go out. "I'm staying home to work out this story idea in my head," sounds a lot lamer than "I'm doing NaNoWriMo."