Camp NaNoWriMo July 2015 Victory! (update)

      This past month I have been engaged in Camp Nanowrimo as has become standard for me around this time of year. However, this month was far more difficult than it should have appeared at first. As I believe I've noted before, it always seems to be more difficult to get my writing done during months when I have little other work to get done. The lack of productivity seeps into my writing, causing me to generally fall behind.

      This month I did not start a new novel, and simply did a regular Nanowrimo word count of 50,000 words (roughly 200 pages). I decided to focus this entire month on working on my main novel "The Beginning of the End", starting the rewrite from the beginning again. Last November when I worked on it, I jumped around from one part to the next instead of following the story in a linear fashion as is my usual habit. I did not do that again this time. I worked on the scenes in the order that I intended for them to appear in the novel. 

       That being said, it should have been noticeably easy for me to win this month, considering the conditions. I was not working with a new novel. In fact, I was working on a novel that I have already written the first draft of and therefore have the rough draft of the plot and characters already worked out. I am able to write for Nanowrimo at 1667 words per hour (2000 if I do nothing but write, but I prefer not to push myself too hard). That means that all it would have taken for me to be on time all month was a simple hour of dedicated writing a day. Of course that didn't happen and I ended up doing the final 30,000 words in the last week of the month.

      I think a main reason that happened was because this past week I have been in my apartment over in Sherbrooke instead of my parent's house in Gatineau. There is something strange about returning home for me now, which I will likely cover in another post, whether a poem or otherwise, but the main essence of it is that I feel trapped in the past while I am there. My life feels stagnant, like I'm just waiting to return to Sherbrooke to continue my life again. This was terrible for my motivation, as instead of working on my writing, I focused mainly on easy and time consuming activities such as video games. 

       But upon returning, I put all of my resources to balancing my writing with other activities, such as seeing a play in town as well as seeing the movie "Paper Towns" with a friend (I read the book last year and thought it was incredible), which I would recommend seeing, given that you don't ignore the protagonist's realization at the end and come walking from the theatre thinking that people can be anything more than just people. 

      Anyways, despite the difficulties that this month has brought me, I emerged once again a victor from yet another installation of Nanowrimo. I believe this victory marks the twelfth or so consecutive victory of mine, which is surprising given that the winrate usually hovers around 14% of participants per Nanowrimo. 

      With that, I mark the end of this post, and go to rest my fingers from the intense story telling that they've been forced to do in the past week. Take care, and until next time,

-Zero

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My Nanowrimo profile