Camp NaNoWriMo: April 2020

Thursday, April 30, 2020

Hello lovelies!

As I was going through a bunch of my old blog posts, I realized that I don't do enough to keep it updated with what I'm doing. It's true that there hasn't been much to talk about in the last few years... but now that I'm actually making progress, I figure it would be a good time to start. Not only to let y'all know what's what, but also to keep a record of what's what for future me.

April is Camp NaNoWrimo! I set my goal to be 12,000 words instead of the usual 50,000 words that most do in November every year. It's was an estimation of what I needed to complete the novella I'm working on (more on that very soon!), so it felt like a reasonable goal.

As much as I love to write, I tend to lose focus often. Sometimes it's out of my control, sometimes it's because of other responsibilities (I currently work from home with a couple of online business ventures so I have to complete those tasks by the end of the day), and sometimes it's because I get distracted by other things. I've been learning what works for me and what doesn't, so I'm getting better at writing on a regular basis, although I still have my unfocused days.

What's been helping me is writing sprints. I'll either do them with others or by myself. I watched writing sprint live streams on the YouTube channel The Courtney Project and that sort of kickstarted everything. I completed my outline in a couple days after procrastinating on it, then began actually writing. When I can't watch the videos live, I'll either put on a previous stream or I'll set a timer. I began using the Forest App and have discovered that shorter sprints are where it's at for me. I was doing 20-25 minute sprints, but 10-15 might be my sweet spot to knock out more words.

Throughout the month of April, I went back and forth on getting ahead. I was often 1000-2000 words behind daily, but then I'd write more than the minimum (400) and get caught up slightly... then miss a day. *sigh* But as I said on Twitter, even if I only reach 10,000 words, I would still consider that a victory.

Where do I stand on the last day of the month?

I've tracked my progress on what I've written throughout the month below. At the end you'll see my total.


April 3rd = 387
April 7th = 711
April 11th = 1543
April 14th = 860
April 16th = 501
April 17th = 603
April 19th = 428
April 20th = 676
April 22nd = 513
April 23rd = 1097
April 24th = 1171
April 25th = 251
April 27th = 142
April 28th = 1107
April 29th = 728

TOTAL = 10,718


To reach my goal of 12,000, I still need 1282 more words. So, can I sprint my way to 12k today? I mean, I could, but it turns out I overestimated  how many words I needed to finish my novella because as of last night, the first draft is complete!

Will I still write 1282 more words? Probably not. I'm going to celebrate finishing the third of my three novellas in this new series by relaxing today. It's been a long journey, but I've finally reached a mini goal in a long list of goals for 2020. Starting tomorrow, I'm going to start the revising process. There are a number of things that need to be fixed between all three books, so I need to make notes of everything to make sure it all get addressed.

Expect to hear lots more about my progress in the coming weeks... as well as the titles of all three of these novellas!


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