Dear Camper,
Today is the last day of Camp NaNoWriMo and we all know whether you’ll be able to win or not. If you’re close to your goal, go get it! Write write write! And if you’re not…
Well, me neither.
I know it feels disappointing. I’ve been participating in Camp NaNo for years at this point, and I’ve won once. That’s it. I’ve also won a NaNo in November. For this April, I set my own goal, a more modest 30K and it was a brand new project so I had plenty of ideas. I was confident that I’d keep up my winning streak.
I didn’t even reach the halfway point.
The thing is, life got in the way. This April is different because I have a crazy job that makes crazy demands. I’m also in the process of searching for a new one. Coupled with the fact that I had beta readers looking over my WIP and that ended up being more work than I originally thought, it just wasn’t in the cards for me to finish a brand new project this month.
And that’s okay.
The thing is, I got closer to my goal, even if I didn’t hit that original 30K word count I set for myself on April 1st. I still grew as a writer this month. As I mentioned, my WIP was in the hands of betas, and I got amazing feedback that generated new ideas I know will make my book even better. I restarted my blog (heyyy) and I met a bunch of new writers on an IG challenge I hosted this month. At some point, I realized it was totally okay if I didn’t reach that 30K of a new project...because I still made progress towards my personal goal of publishing my current WIP. That’s what matters.
Dear camper, I don’t know what your story is, but I want to tell you it’s okay if you didn’t reach your goal either. Life gets in the way. Sometimes it doesn’t, and it’s just hard to get motivated. The most important thing is that you set a goal and you made even small steps towards reaching it. Every word counts, even if it wasn’t what you originally intended.
Kim Chance, author of Keeper, posted about lack of motivation on Twitter recently, and her words have really helped me gain perspective on my writing. In a Twitter thread about how she was finding it difficult to write her sequel, she wrote:
And that’s powerful. It doesn’t matter if you reached your word count. Because you have words. You wrote. And eventually your words will be a book. All of the little steps you take will get you there eventually. I hope you see this month as a win regardless of whether you get that winner’s sticker or not.
Write on, friend.
Grace K.