As the days of November passed I actually kept writing, just a little behind the scheduled goal of 1700 words a day. And then for few days I really pounded it out for three or four hours at a shot and made the goal of 50,000 words of fiction to become a NaNoWriMo winner and veteran. Fifty thousand words is about half of a real novel manuscript. I learned:

1. Fiction writing is addictive.
2. Some days writing is better than others.
3. A piece of yourself must go into each of the characters or they are not interesting.
4. Characters really do come alive and start dictating what they want to do.
5. Can't be scared of the stratospheric numbers: word counts, pages, number of characters, number of chapters. . .
6. The great tasks of composition and revision are nothing but work. Work is all they are.
7. Those pages and pages of dialogue were the characters defining themselves.
8. Write anything; worry about it later.
9. While you're drafting, go there. Just go there.
10. Write the cliche (example: the harried, worrywart suburban mom) and then give her one of your own traits or values. Suddenly she's real.
11. The fourth dimension of any novel is its moral dimension.

Is what I wrote any good? Of course not. It's a draft. Drafts aren't good. Drafts are the first step on the way to making it good.

The time and trouble was worth it. Now I understand novelists better than before.