Dear Readers

It’s over. Camp NaNo is over for the month of April. Hard to believe it’s been over for a week already. I miss the chatter and the sprints. But at the same time, it’s nice not to have a deadline of words hanging over my head. Well, not literally. I could have written my goal and hung it from the rafters over my bunk (I sleep on a top bunk), but I didn’t. *jots note for next camp*

Anyway, Camp is over.

I started camp with a goal of writing 20k words. That goal seemed high, and I almost lowered it since I knew there were going to be several days when I wasn’t going to be able to write. (Not counting Sundays since I don’t write then anyway.) But I left it. By the end of the first week I was several days ahead of my daily goal. And I stayed ahead. Somehow. 🙂 Some of that was because, Lissa, one of the girls in the cabin, and I were having a friendly competition in writing. We were neck and neck. I would end my writing day ahead of her, and then she would stay up a little longer and write a little more until her word count was higher than mine. The next day I’d get my count higher, only to have her top me.

With that sort of competition it wasn’t too hard to push on and write more and more. Finally the day came when we were both almost to our goal of 20k. She reached it about 5 minutes before I did. 🙂 But we didn’t stop writing.

I headed on to 25k, then 30k, and then 35k. This Camp had my 2nd largest word count in a month ever. It was also my first time for writing over 3k words in a day three days in a row! After the 3rd day my brain was tired. But it was so exciting to know that so much was being written on By Paths Unknown. I can now see the end of the story, but I don’t know how long it will take to reach it. Hopefully not too much longer.

This camp had a lot of sprinting, and writing, and chatting. Even though there were a few who either couldn’t make it to camp after all, or who weren’t able to do much writing, the rest of us wrote enough to make our cabin stats over the 100% mark. Hurray for all the new stories!

Now I’m looking forward to a break, not from writing, but from deadlines and high writing goals. July is coming soon with another Camp NaNo.

This year in camp there wasn’t as much extra activities. We didn’t have to dump anyone in the lake, or send a search party to find anyone. We did have some great parties including a birthday party for me. 🙂 I had some sweet girls in my cabin. Lots of celebrating when milestones were reached, and way too much chocolate! And that was camp.

 

I have to go help clean the cabin now. Some girls have already left, but a few are still here. I think we’ll have a bonfire and burn all those trashed story drafts.

 

 

P.S. Guess what?

I have a publishing date for my story Hymns in the Hills! And you can help if you want! You don’t have to have a blog to be a part of my tour either. Just sign up here! I’d love to have you join the fun. If you have any questions, just ask.