Writers reflect on NaNoWriMo experience

National Novel Writing Month has come and gone giving the thousands of participants a chance to reflect on the experience. Some can say they have written a 50,000-word novel.

The National Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) is an event around the country that challenges participants to write a 175-page novel during the month of November.

With a due date of midnight on November 30, some participants were writing to the last minute.

“I finished basically 15 minutes before midnight,” said sophomore Jennifer Jablonski an English major at George Mason University.

The event’s goal is for the writers to focus on the quantity of the writing and not the quality.

“When you write for quantity instead of quality, you end up getting both,” said the event founder Chris Baty.

While this concept was difficult for Jablonski to accept at first, she has now developed a system of writing in her fourth year of participation in NaNoWriMo.

“When you don’t have to worry about editing you can do whatever,” said Jablonski. She adds that writing without having to worry about quality helps you concentrate on writing under pressure.

NaNoWriMo doesn’t award any individual winners, but celebrates all participants in the event who write and submit 50,000 words.

While Jablonski left most of her writing for the last few days of November, her roommate also participated and she spread her writing throughout the month.

“Not as painful as I thought it to be,” said sophomore Annie Chen an Art major who is in her first year of participation.

While Chen isn’t sure whether she will participate in the writing project again next year, she did learn a valuable lesson from the activity.

“Don’t have to have everything planned out,” said Chen as she reflected on her novel about a character named Zero.

As for the next step, Chen hopes to completely finish her novel and print it out and have people read it.

For Jablonski, she is relieved to be done with the activity for this year and she said it is always a good feeling to know you have successfully met the challenge.

“It makes you feel good when you can say, you wrote a novel,” said Jablonski.