It’s now August 1st, so how did the last month go?
Well, first of all good news – my arm is doing much better! I can type again – yay! Seriously, there are not enough exclamation marks in the world, to say how pleased and relieved I am about that. I loathe dictation and I would not have done half as much as I did, if I had been stuck using it.
So how much did I do?
Well, my official word count goal was 30k. I was fairly certain I could manage that and I wanted my winners badge for a change, I make it so infrequently during Camp. My project goals were to finish my prequel, and make a start on book two. Also, I had fanfic to write for my WIP’s, which as I explained helps me all round with productivity.
The story of the month can be seen in the stats graph really. I started off slow, with a couple of days where I didn’t do any writing at all. I had to help with a work project, that was non-writing related, and I didn’t have to time to write. I then got back on track within a couple of days, before there was another straight line as I caught a bad cold. I felt awful and so again didn’t write.
On Day 17, I had 19k. That was the last day that I didn’t write. After that? Well the graph just keeps spiking upward in a very pleasing fashion. I made 30k, four days later on day 21. I made 40k and then some, three days later on day 24. I made 50k and then some four days later on day 28 and I made 60k on day 30.
My previous record for words written in a month was NaNo 2014, when I wrote 61,236. That was a little different as it was one complete novel, and the first 10k of another, as opposed to a multitude of different projects. However, it’s Camp, so a mixed bag is allowed and to be honest words and progress, are words and progress – it all helps!
I wound up with a final total of 65,027 words this month – breaking that previous record. It really makes me wonder how far I could go if I keep this up, if I train my mind to focus more. I am terrible with procrastination, I waste so much time, so if I could leverage more of my day – well the sky is the limit.
In other words I had a pretty damn good month. I wrote 46k in two weeks. Just think, if I could keep up that pace, then I could be writing 80k+ a month! Now, that would truly be something.
Leaving words aside, I finished the prequel as planned. In fact it’s not only the first draft that got completed, but the second, and the edits and it’s even been formatted ready for release. For book two, I averaged out the word count, of words per day to finish by the end of August, and I’m right on schedule with that, with a days buffer on top. Plus, I did a bunch of other writing besides, which helped me with my mood as I felt more productive and that kept me going, even when I hit rough points in my draft.
Camp NaNo has never been good to me really. I have always struggled, never reached my goal honestly. So to not only reach it – but double it – I can’t tell you how good that feels. It feels like I might finally be on track, like I might finally be on a upward swing to success, rather than heading for failure as I usually believe. My mood is quite changeable, so I’m sure when the high wears off, I’ll be back to thinking the worst again. However, for the moment I’m just going to enjoy it.
Oh and I changed the widget at the side. Rather than counting progress on a single project, I decided to track the number of words I wrote in the year. It was a bit of an ego boost when I totaled up the last six months. I had felt it had been a bad year, what with my arm and everything, so to learn that I had written about 100k despite that, it felt damn good. I’m going to track more accurately from here on out. I think tracking is important – it certainly seems to be helping significantly at the moment.
My plan for August is to finish book two’s draft. I have about 50k left so that is my official goal for the month of August – 50k. Obviously, I have a lot of fanfic that I want to write on top, so I have no idea how much I will write in August, lots hopefully, which will feel great. I love being productive. Here’s hoping I can keep it up!