Camp NaNoWriMo is officially over for another year. I’m proud to say that my winning streak has broken.
This would have been my fifth win in a row, but I never reached 50,000 words. I only made it to 33,259 words. While it feels weird not to make it to 50k, I’m oddly okay with not winning that certificate.
I decided to add 50,000 words to my already 50,000-word novel Hunter. As I continued the story where I left off last July, I slowly realized that the story most likely wasn’t going to need another 50k. But I kept writing anyway because… why not?
I think I only added another 20k or 25k or so to the novel before the draft was complete.
I was going to edit it but didn’t want to start it right away. So, I decided to write some Short Story Sundays.
I ended up finishing those for the rest of the year leaving me with the word count I have now: 33k.
I had hoped to get a lot of handwriting done while I was away on vacation. That didn’t work out as I only wrote about 550 words one night and that was it. However, I hung out with my parents and cousins instead so I’m not complaining about not getting any writing done.
There was one day left when I got home and I wondered if I was able to bang out a bunch of words by August 1.
But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that I had already won Camp.
No, I didn’t reach my goal of writing 50,000 words in one month. But I got over half, which is better than nothing, I completed the first draft of another novel, and I also completed five months of Short Story Sundays (which is a load off my shoulders, seriously).
NaNo is just about getting the words down. It’s about quantity, not quality. The first draft of everything is crap. The first draft is just you telling yourself the story.
That’s what I did. I got the first draft down. I wrote a bunch of shorts.
So I wasn’t able to print out that winner’s certificate or get the winner’s badges.
But I did win.
Unofficially, but I’m counting it.
Did you win Camp NaNo last month? How did your writing go?
