You’ve got something under your belt now that shows you that you can go the long distance, but reading your comments about the process clarified some of my problems with NaNoWriMo. Writing a novel is a marathon endeavor, but I don’t think it was ever meant to be done quickly. One of my challenges with the two novels I’ve written was to keep reminding myself that every page and every word counted. Sometimes, I’d get so excited about getting to that scene down the line, so much so that I wasn’t attending to the moments in front of me, on the very page where I was typing. Of course, if you’re not a linear/chronological writer, no problem, you just go and write whatever scene you want to write. In the longer fiction, though, I tend to be right on the same journey my characters are on, so our road trips are fairly linear, while also fairly slow and lazy, with lots of detours. The bats out of hell pace of Nanowrimo runs counter to that luxuriating time, and the fermenting time also gets cut way short.

All that notwithstanding, congratulations to you on doing it; I’m sure there are things that you’ll take away from the experience that will continue to shape the writer you are.