I've been meaning to write this since camp finished but its been a busy month. But, here I am almost a month late because I still thought it was worth writing about. My goal for Camp Nano was to write 50,000 words in the month of July. Since I started writing full time, the most I've written in a month was 25,000 so I knew this was going to be a challenge. I'll save you the suspense, I only wrote 31,147 in July and didn't meet my goal, but I still count it as a success!
31,000+ words is still more than I've ever written in a month and I found a few tricks that helped me get the words down. The hardest challenge of Camp Nano for me, was finding something new to write everyday. I don't always have a new scene in my head and that can lead to staring at a blank page, which isn't productive. So every night, before I went to sleep, I would make a list of scenes or plot points that I knew had to happen in the book. That way when I ran out of things to write, I would just look at the list and continue writing instead of staring at a blank page.
Camp Nano, also helped me up my daily word count. When I first started this full time writing journey, my goal was 1,000 words a day and honestly that was a struggle sometimes. But by the end of Camp Nano, I was getting 2,500-4,000 words a day down on paper. That's amazing! I never thought I would be able to up my word count by so much and now I have 3/4 of another manuscript done!
The best part of Camp Nano though, was working with other writers and motivating one another. Being surrounded by a group of people who are all trying to accomplish the same thing really helped to keep me motivated. Even on bad days, when the words wouldn't flow and I just felt stuck, I could turn to my cabin for support.
For anyone who is trying to write a book, Camp Nano or Nanowrimo in November is a great way to get the words onto the page. I will definitely be signing up in November and this time I will hit that 50,000 word count goal!
Until Next Time!