There’s only one week left of CampNaNoWriMo. Where did the month go?

This week, for the first time ever out of all the times I’ve attempted CampNaNoWriMo, I lowered my word count goal. I’ve never won a CampNaNo event. Whether I set a high goal or a low goal, I always seem to lose momentum and not have the motivation to do a big catch up at the end of the month.

Part of the reason I’ve never lowered my goal before is because I’m stubborn. Another reason is that winning CampNaNoWriMo isn’t the most important thing to me. I participate because I have fun and I like the extra encouragment, interaction and reason to push myself to write more. Winning Camp just never felt like a vital part of the experience the way it is for the main NaNoWriMo event. It might just be me, but the laid back atmosphere takes the pressure to hit the goal I set and throws it out the window.

I’ve often set unattainable goals for Camp. I’ve written 50,000 words or a bit more in a month on multiple occassions in the past, but I’ve set even higher goals for CampNaNoWriMo during the last few sessions. It hasn’t gone well. I haven’t even approached 50,000 words during those months.

This month I started out with a goal of over 73,000 words because I wanted Inbetween to have a total word count of 150,000 by the end of July. By the start of this week, I knew that was not going to happen. I decided on Monday to lower my goal by 50,000 words. Now I’m trying to get the project’s total word count to 100,000 by the end of the month. It is a lower goal, but one I will still need to work to acheive. Writing 10,000 words in a month isn’t too difficult for me anymore, but I rarely make it to 20,000 in a single month outside of November.

How’s CampNaNoWriMo going for you? Have you validated your novel for a win? Have you changed your goal this month to a more realistic target?