Can you believe July is over already?

Camp NaNoWriMo was full of surprises this time. I always fail. I always struggle. It doesn’t matter if I try to repeat a full NaNo with a goal of 50k or aim much, much lower. I never make it.

Well…

This month was so different from any other Camp I’ve ever attempted. Even after experiencing it and taking a day to process, I still can’t properly expressed exactly what made this month my first ever Camp NaNoWriMo win. Was it the low goal I set? How did limited social interaction play into my ability to get the writing done?

Honestly, I don’t have the answers. Under more ordinary circumstances, I might be able to reflect and pinpoint some different habits and behaviors that allowed me to succeed. This is not a year of ordinary circumstances. I don’t know what helped me and what hurt me in July. Every month is strange now. There are too many variables.

I’ll just accept the win and be grateful for the writing I managed to do. My writing muscles are in good shape now so I’ll do my best to carry on with writing this draft. It should be finished sometime soon!

There’s one thing I wish I explain is the drop off in my word count for several days in a row at the end of the month. Something happened and multiple low writing days in a row resulted. Even with my daily writing logs I can’t pinpoint exactly what went wrong since those days don’t seem significantly different from other points in the month that didn’t destroy my word count.

I’m really proud of the work I put into the final four days of the month. My comeback this month was so much healthier than the sort of sprints to the finish line I tend to pull off during NaNoWriMo. I definitely pushed myself on a couple days there, but it wasn’t such a push that it felt out of proportion to my output at other points during the month. I worked to make it happen, but in a healthy way. I hope I can start doing this during NaNoWriMo as well.

How did Camp NaNoWriMo go for you? Did you learn anything you can carry over to NaNoWriMo or other writing experiences?