Why I Failed At NaNoWriMo

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I am going to start this post by stating the obvious: I FAILED AT NANOWRIMO!!!!!
I don't know why. I was doing fine the first week, then splat, my hopes of finishing that novel, or even making a dent, just disappeared.  

The first day of NaNoWriMo I was doing fabulous. I wrote 4,000 words that first day. I didn't know I could do that. Better yet, I wrote those 4,000 words in about 1 and half to 2 hours. I find that impressive. On the second day, I wrote 2,000 words. Not nearly as impressive as the first day, but still  pretty good. I was way ahead of my word count. On the third day, I wrote 2,000 words. The fourth day I wrote 1,250 words.  On the fifth day, I wrote a thousand words.  I was on fire!

Then I went to camp for a week and didn't write at all. I was about ten thousand words behind. I could have caught up. I could have written four thousand words a day.  Spoiler Alert: I didn't. I wasn't feeling it.  I was just out of it. I just wanted to enjoy my summer.  I wanted to read all day.  

For me, Camp NaNoWriMo wasn't about writing fifty thousand words of a novel in one month. Let's be honest, fifty thousand words doesn't make the kind of novel I want to write. I want to write something that is not super lengthy, but normal sized.  NaNoWriMo was about self discovery for me. I discovered that I could write four thousand words in a day, and about ten thousand in four days.  That was HUGE for me. I am now researching for another idea.  I am not going to write four thousand words a day, for it is in the middle of the school year. I am going to write and I won't separate contractions.  I am not going to be so super concerned about that word count. I am going to write quality. I might try NaNoWriMo again, but only when I want to just get words onto paper. 

Concluding, I may not have been a "winner" this July, but I know that I did win something. I won a HUGE realization in my writing life. I can write more words quicker than I ever imagined. I am a "Winner" in my eyes. Thanks, Camp NaNoWriMo. 

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