Camp NaNo Reflection: July 2016

Another Camp NaNo has come and gone! I only mentioned that I was doing it this month in passing, so here's some more detail about how my month went in terms of writing.

I did Casanova again with the goal of 15k, which was my initial goal in April before I bumped it up to 18k. I didn't change my goal this time (mainly because it never crossed my mind). I still reached 21,594 words by July 31st!

My word counts this month was a lot more varied than they were in April. I reached 15k on the 18th and started slacking off after that point lol. I also struggled a lot with finding things to write about, for both Casanova and Aperture, because July was kind of a lull in my summer and I didn't have too much in real life experiences to draw from. (The 3rd is a complete outlier. I'm still not quite sure how I pulled it off.) 

I still managed to write more than 1k for Casanova on four different days this month! The 31st was definitely a surprise. I got an idea and I was able to run with it a lot further than I was expecting. Overall I'm happy with my word counts for July. 

As for the writing itself: I made some more progress on the story and the characters, but I still haven't gotten around to writing the first chapter OTL. I definitely have a better idea of how to write it and how to fit it into the progression of events, but I need to work up enough inspiration to start picking at it. I'm still hoping I can get it done before I go back to school on the 29th. (Holy crap I'm not ready.)

In other writing- and success-related news, I passed my driver's license test yesterday!! I'm a fully licensed adult!!

Long story short, I resisted getting it for very close to a year, but I realized I would be inconveniencing my parents and my friends by continuing to dig my heels in. Also, I wanted to beat some of my friends to the punch. I have a really strange sense of competition. And some really lazy friends. 

One of the (many other) influencing factors that pushed me to finally book the test was actually Toni and Carter, the two main characters of Casanova. I've been writing so many scenes of Toni driving, and almost as many regarding Carter's reliance on others because he refuses to get a license. I finally got tired of doing the same thing as Carter and decided being more like Toni would be better. 

So, I can officially say that my writing has made me suck it up and do some Adulting. 

The next NaNo event is the Big NaNo in November. I haven't decided on what I'll be doing this year; I could continue my trend and try re-drafting Casanova, or I could do something new and try drafting a sci-fi Nutcracker retelling idea I've had for a while. I've still got a couple months to decide. 

If you guys participated in Camp NaNo this past month, I'd love to hear how it went for you! 

Camp NaNo Results Apr 2016

April and Camp NaNo are officially over! (And I'm a week out from finals, crying forever.) I didn't make an update post because of how my post schedule worked out, so here's just the final wrap up!

I chose Casanova like I did for the November NaNo in 2015. My word count goal for this month was 15k, but I also set a stretch goal of 18k. Which I then upped to 20k.

My final word count was 22,539! This averages out to 777 words a day.

I really like line graphs ... Anyway, I had a couple days this month where I was busy or pretty uninspired, but I managed to meet the minimum word count goal of 500 words each day! I'm really proud of how I did. 

This is the bar graph combined with the rest of the writing I did this month. I worked on Aperture some, but it only adds up to 6.5k. I wanted to work more on it the past couple days but couldn't find the inspiration to write anything. 

I wrote 29k total this month between the two stories, which met the goal I'd set of 25k total. I'd totally forgotten about this goal until now and I'm surprised that I still beat it nonetheless ;; 

I made a chart of my Camp average word count over the course of the month. This was completely unnecessary in all honesty but I think it's cool to see how it changed over the course of the month. (I also should've made it orange tbh)

I did a lot of story development this month! I finally named two main characters and I found a better reasoning for source of the main conflict. I also succeeded in using Casanova over Aperture in terms of writing out my experiences and feelings of the day. Most of them were scenes of Carter procrastinating on various homework assignments.

(Not hard to guess what I did a lot of this month.) 

I think I burned myself out this month, though, and I still need to do some fine-tuning before I can fill in all the scenes I keep skipping in favor of Toni yelling at Carter to do his work. (Toni was the voice of my conscious this month ngl.) 

May is looking to be pretty busy and chaotic so far, so I'm going to let back on my goals for this month and just keep it at 500 words a day in general. I'm going to give Casanova a break and hopefully give Aperture the attention it didn't get in April. I'd also like to poke at a couple ideas I haven't done much with.

All in all I'm really happy with how I did this month! ♥

Camp NaNo Plans April 2016

This is my 5th Camp NaNo! I love the November NaNos to death, but I think Camp NaNos are a little more fun. They're more flexible with word counts and they usually happen twice a year c: And cabins are really fun even if I never talk to my cabin mates OTL

In case the picture wasn't enough of a clue, I'm going to be working on Casanova this time! I realized during NaNo 2015 that I wasn't nearly as prepared as I needed to be. My plan was to work hard behind the scenes between December and March so I could attack the April Camp NaNo and fill in all the holes I left in my first draft.

... which didn't really happen. I've been doing really well with writing every day, but I haven't done as much research and planning as I was hoping. I've still got a couple days to catch up, so hopefully I'll step it up! (Probably not.)

My word count goal is 15k, which is 500 words a day. That's pretty low of a goal for me, but I'd rather have a realistic goal than overshoot and then fall short. I'm also going to have a lot of school work in April as the semester gets ready to end the second week of May.

I'm doing the same thing as I did in November and only counting Casanova towards my word count goal. I'm hoping that I can reach 25k total including Aperture and any of the other stories I work on, and I also have a stretch goal of writing 18k for Casanova, assuming everything goes well this month.

I have a couple more Camp-related posts coming up in the next month or so! I don't know if you can friend people like you can on the main NaNo website, but here's my profile if you wanna see my progress or send me a message! I'd love to hear from other people participating this April! ♥