If you are unaware of what Camp NaNoWriMo is, I have a post that talks briefly about it here
My goal was 50,000 words and I reached that goal on April 29th.
Camp NaNoWriMo was a very interesting event and is something I would recommend new writers to do. Before doing this event, I was a very picky writer. I always wrote something and went back and changed it immediately because I did not like how it sounded. That, would be called your inner editor.
NaNoWriMo does not let you do that. It pushes you to keep writing and to keep letting those words flow out. At first, it felt odd to not reread my words for 100 times and change every single one. For Camp, I had to keep writing and writing. Before I knew it, I had written more words in a week than I had in two months!
I wasn't particularly clean with my writing, something I'll leave for editing. As I continued, my sentences become more choppy, short, and 3rd grade-like. But for me, it didn't matter, because I was getting my words out and on the page.
Like expected, my story had some crazy turns. I did have somewhat of general idea for my story, but not much of a strict outline. Random things happened, and I allowed them to happen because that's what the story wanted to do. In the end, I got a hot mess of a novel. But, it's still a novel!
I had a strong start to Camp, but I started to fall behind in the 2nd week. It did not feel great, but luckily, I had spring break, in which I wrote around 10,000 words to catch up. After that week, things were good again. I was maintaining my goals, and on some days, passed them! After day 16, I had a good flow going.
I could tell that the NaNoSprints via Twitter and the Virtual Write-Ins via Youtube were helpful for some. I did some sprints but I never used the prompts since I didn't want my story to be messier than it already was. I did think the sprints did help though. In a way, it was a strict demand. Write for a certain amount of time without stopping. I couldn't do any of the Virtual Write-Ins, but I thought the idea was cool.
Getting to the 50,000 words was great. It felt great and made me extremely happy and proud. It was like a realization state like, "wow, did I really just do that?"
This was my first time participating in anything Nanowrimo, and I was very happy i did it. It was enjoyable, yet stressful, and really showed me what i was capable of doing. Although my cabin members become pretty idle, I was able to encourage myself and do it.
I will not be touching or looking at my novel for the next to weeks. It will be best to let it sit there and will allow me time to read a little and rest my brain.
There is still a lot of more work to be done with my novel. But at least I have something to work with now.
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