Camp NaNoWriMo July report

I spent the month of July doing something I’ve never done before. Writing a novel.  Well, to be accurate, I wrote half a novel–50,000 words worth.

I participated in Camp NaNoWriMo (Nation Novel Writing Month), a summer version of the original November version of NaNoWriMo.  This year there are two camps, on in July, and a second round in August.  When I heard about Camp in March, I knew that I had to participate.  No more excuses.

I took the time to work up an outline, character studies, etc. And then jumped in when July 1st rolled around.  My original goal was not only to “win” by writing 50,000 words in 30 days, but also to actually complete the story, which I thought would take something closer to 60-70,000 words.

I quickly realized that writing 2,000 was going to be harder than I thought, even with my detailed outline.  Especially since I’d never written every single day before.  I told myself that if I managed to get the 50,000 words done by July 30, I would considered it a victory.

I fell behind in the third week, just about the time my outline came off the rails. Suddenly my character decided to do what she wanted.

It was hard. Harder than I thought. Even the scenes that I had very clear in my mind were hard to get onto the paper.

I found it took me longer to “get in the grove” of writing than I thought.  And I had to fight very hard to tune out my inner editor, who screamed at me to go back and fix the sentence I had just written.

But, in the end, I did it. I spent the last three days glued to the key board, ignoring my friends and husband, and managed to catch up and validate.

To reward myself, I’m allowing the editor loose on the first several chapters of the book that need to be seriously reworked.  My goal is to get those chapters fixed and back in line with the plot changes my strong willed character insisted on.

And then, I’m going to go for round two in August. This time, I’m going to rebel, and not be concerned so much with the final word count at the end of month, but focus on getting the first draft completed.