I don’t think that there are any writers out there that will disagree that writing anything, whether it is a novel, or a movie or television script, or a play, or even a song, takes an incredible amount of discipline. You can’t just will the material on the page (if only we could do that—I’d have over a dozen books published already) and then wave a magic wand and make it happen.
You have to actually designate the time and weave writing into everything else in your life. More importantly, you have to actually follow through. In the many years that I have done NaNoWriMo there are so many things that this event has taught me about writing, not the least of which is discipline. Here are a few things that you can take away from the NaNoWriMo event, whether you finish your novel or not (but you will finish).
1) NaNoWriMo makes you have to focus more on the important aspects of your novel. You have less time to get caught up in all of the nitpicky things about you novel and just concentrate on the plot and the characters and the setting that will make your readers fall in love with your novel.
2) NaNoWriMo gives you that deadline that frankly some of us need in order to really sit down and get the task at hand completed. Some writers just work better with deadlines that they absolutely can’t miss.
3) NaNoWriMo makes us set a time to write in order to get the work done. It gives us more of a routine that we can schedule things around so that we come out on the other side of our efforts with a finished product.
4) NaNoWriMo provides a network of other writers that can understand your goals and aspirations where your writing is concerned because they have the same goals and aspirations. Writing can be such an isolated career so sometimes it is good to have that group of writers that you can reach out to for critique or advice.
What are some of the things that you take away from the event of NaNoWriMo?
Jimmetta Carpenter
Writer/Editor
The Diary: Succession of Lies (Now Available)
Writing as “Jaycee Durant”
http://unpleasantlyplump.wordpress.com/
http://www.facebook.com/people/Jimmetta-Carpenter/1069480310
Write 2 Be 
#2 on the nose. I’m using NaNo to finish something that’s been languishing for ages. Now that I’m getting back into it, it’s starting to get exciting again. 🙂