Camp NaNoWriMo Achieved

[starfishstar]

Heeeeyo! I still can't tell if NaNoWriMo is going to give me some kind of banner/award/whatever for completing the April Camp NaNoWriMo challenge (I met MY goal, but I don't know if I met THE goal, since this is not November and my goal was not 50,000 words), so I'm going ahead and doing this myself:

I met my Camp NaNoWriMo goal!  \o/

My goal was only 15,000 words, small peanuts compared to actual NaNoWriMo, but it turned out to be a really good amount – enough to keep me writing, but not so much that the need to hit a daily word goal became a weight I was dragging around. Small enough that I could keep churning out the necessary daily average even when I wasn't sure where the stories was going, and indeed pulled well ahead for a while...which then came in handy in the last few days, when I suddenly got every possible professional/academic/everything opportunity thrown my way all at once, and had to put writing on the back burner for a few days. By yesterday I'd caught back up, but deliberately wrote only up to the point of 14,999 words and stopped there, so I could have the satisfaction of hitting my goal today, the final day of the challenge. :-)

In the end, I wrote 15,350 words, all of them on the same story. (Usually when I do a month-long word count challenge I'm bouncing around between a bunch of projects, so this time I deliberately worked on just one.) Where did those 15,350 words get me, on this particular writing project? As of a couple days ago, I was feeling like the only thing I'd succeeded in establishing, 15,000 words in, was that I really don't have a handle on my main character at all. (The side characters, yes.) Usually I say my writing tends toward all character and no plot; this time it seemed to be all worldbuilding and no character. (And, inevitably, also no plot.) But these last couple of days I took another run at the main character's perspective, and got her back to a place I like better. And I do like the world I'm creating. No surprise there, I can write about stormy northern seas forever!

I may set this project aside now and go back to other things, but this is a story I've been thinking about off and on at least since I spent time in Orkney (three years ago??) and got interested in researching the folklore there, and started thinking about a novel that might draw on that folklore, and also the landscapes I love from Iceland, and also maybe some story elements of The Snow Queen... It's not going to turn into a novel anytime soon, but it's nice to know that now I've got some more sketches of worldbuilding and character ideas to come back to whenever I next want to pick it up again.

Also, did I mention that I'm apparently going to have a flash fiction piece published in the collection that's being put together from Flash Fiction February? Not to mention that today I submitted the finalized, revised, and otherwise completely-entirely-done-ized manuscript of my article that's going to be published in an academic journal in my field. And suddenly have some cool opportunities to present my research in other formats as well.

For once, everything's coming up roses. :-)

Comments

[sanguinity]

Woohoo, congratulations!

[starfishstar]

Thank you. :D

[rachelindeed]

Wonderful to hear all this! Congratulations on all you've done, and also on all the projects you can look forward to coming back to as the year goes on -- it sounds like you've got a lot of good things finished and even more good things growing!

[starfishstar]

Thank you! You always add such thoughtful perspective. :-) Yes, it's good things both ahead and behind, isn't it?

[nerakrose]

congrats on achieving your goal!!! well done!! I don't have much else to say as this is more of a drive-by comment than anything else as I'm heading out in a bit, but yay!! I'm always so happy to see positive writing updates.

[starfishstar]

Thanks so much! Oh, it's awfully nice to know there's vicarious enjoyment to be had from a writing update like this. :-) (In a way I feel sort of silly celebrating such a comparatively small goal – I've done much larger goals other times in the past! – but then again, this is what worked right now, and it actually worked really well, so – yay!)

[nerakrose]

it's not silly at all! circumstances change and this is what you wanted this time, and you achieved it so - all in all: Good. :)

(I feel like that sentence doesn't make any sense at all, but I've stared at it for too long now...)

[starfishstar]

No, no, it makes total sense – and I appreciate it! Even though I know better, I still seem to end up comparing myself to other people's goals/theoretical goals/what I think my goals should be if I lived, you know, in a vacuum devoid of all other life challenges. So it always helps to have this kind of encouragement that my goals are fine, right now, just as they are. :-)

[scfrankles]

Congratulations on everything ^___^ You've had such a lot on your plate recently - it's lovely to hear that things are going well ^___^

[starfishstar]

Thank you! Yeah, it was a rather delightful surprise to write a purely positive update for once. :D

By the way, I've thought of you a number of times lately (missing seeing your name at Holmestice! and around these parts in general) and hoping all's well out there.

[scfrankles]

I'm still staggering on :P And I'm still concentrating on language learning at the moment ^___^

[starfishstar]

Oh, hurray! I'm always so happy to hear about your cool Dutch-learning hobby and that you're still putting such focus into it. :-)

(And that wasn't at all a complaint, by the way, about not seeing you at Holmestice or otherwise around on DW – it was a "I miss seeing SCFrankles, I hope you're doing okay!")