I did something different this week. I lowered my word count goal!

I’ve always set my goal too high for CampNaNoWriMo and before now I always had too much pride to lower it. This month, I decided to change that. Having the ability to set my own goal should mean I make it something I stand a chance of achieving. My original goal of 30k was obviously out of reach by the end of the first week.

Aside from letting myself change my goal, the most difficult part was deciding what my new goal should be. I spent a long time considering whether 20k or 15k would be more fair. I didn’t want to make things too easy, but I wanted to make sure I stood a chance of winning with my new goal. In the end, I decided to cut my word count in half and settled on a new goal of 15k.

15k is a much smaller goal than the 50k I often manage during NaNoWriMo, but I’ve never won a single CampNaNoWriMo event and I’ve participated in all of them. I want to change that and I think letting go of the idea of huge NaNoWriMo-like word counts will help me win for once. Without the frantic energy and massive group support of NaNoWriMo, I just can’t write anywhere near 50k in a month, but in a good non-NaNo month I can easily write more than 10k.

I had one extraordinary day of writing this week with over 2.4k for that day alone. I had an urge to write by hand that day. The change of writing medium and giving myself permission to write something that might not end up fitting into the main story gave me a creative boost. Now I just need to recreate that boost a few times over. Unfortunately, I don’t think continuing to write by hand would consistently provide the same results. Without the random urge to do something different, writing by hand is still just writing.

How did the 3rd week of CampNaNoWriMo go for you? Are you behind? Ahead? Have you ever lowered your Camp goal to something more within reach halfway through the month?