I have never really finished anything I've started on that thing. I've never taken part in the community aspect. I've never really written anything I'd consider stellar (except for my first one, and that was more through sheer momentum of having reached the 30K mark on a story for the first time rather than anything inherent to the event).

Nanowrimo is a good motivational tool to set youself the goal of writing 50K in a month, but it isn't going to write those 50K words for you, if you know what I mean. I think I may do another 'meta-nano' like I did (or attempted to do) last year.