I have officially won Camp NaNoWriMo for the first time!
Now I didn’t win by writing 50,000 words in one month like some. The best part of Camp NaNoWriMo is that you can set your own goal for July. My goal was to add 5,000 words to my work-in-progress, The Midnight Huntress. I managed to accomplish my goal one day early on July 30th and I couldn’t be more excited. In the midst of my excitement over being a first-time winner, I wanted to share with you the three things I learned by doing Camp NaNoWriMo.
I Love Attending Live Write-Ins
Before starting Camp NaNoWriMo, I knew author YouTubers did live write-ins. However, I hardly ever took advantage of them. It wasn’t until I needed to use a sprinting strategy to get all of my words in that I started seeking live-write ins out. I’m a very social person, so these have been perfect for me. I get so many more words in doing these live streams because I am motivated by people in the chat and the hosts. I have also met so many new authors creating amazing content through this and have found a small writing group.
If you don’t already attend write-ins, I highly suggest going onto YouTube and searching “writing sprints” and filter it to live. Searching those keywords has helped me find all of the new authors I enjoy watching and writing with. I can promise you that the days I was most productive were the days I was hanging out on these streams. These streams single-handly help me accomplish my NaNoWriMo goal.
Here are the two main streamers I have been watching this month:
After attending these regularly for July, I’m inspired to start hosting live streams of my own on YouTube. I’ll let you know when that starts up!
Setting Realistic Goals Are Key for My Success
In some people’s eyes, setting a 5,000 words word goal for Camp NaNoWriMo seems small and too easy. For me though, this was a realistic goal with a bit of a challenge. If you have read my blog post, “How to Write Your Novel in a Year,” my average month word goal is between 4,000 to 4,500 words. By setting my goal to 5,000, that made me have to write around 1,000 extra words. A bit of a challenge, but still doable. If I had tried to set it higher than that, I would have caused myself unneeded stress. This stress would have caused me to shut down completely and not reach my goals at all because impostor syndrome would have crept in.
It is important to challenge yourself and reach for the stars, but I need manageable goals that I know I can attain. By completing these smaller goals, I am building my confidence to complete larger goals like finishing drafting my novel this year and winning NaNoWriMo in November by drafting a whole new book. I know that need the momentum to complete these larger goals now.
I highly suggest you take a hard look at your goals if you’re not able to achieve them as you want. Maybe you need to scale them back a bit to help build up your confidence. Nothing is better than the feeling of accomplishing a goal. That feeling makes you hunger to finish bigger and better goals in the future.
I Struggle With Focusing on Multiple Large Goals at the Same Time
Even though I know that I need to set realistic goals in order to help myself become successful, I struggle with juggling multiple goals at once. In July, I wanted to start a cleaning schedule, win Camp NaNoWriMo, and workout regularly. You can guess which goal was actually accomplished.
I’m sure I could have achieved all these goals, but I struggle with dividing my focus. I believe I need to work on more time management skills, so I can accomplish everything I want. It is so easy for me to make excuses like I don’t have enough time, but it is important for me to figure out a way to achieve all my goals without letting things fall to the wayside.
If you have any tips or tricks on how to accomplish multiple goals at the same time, please leave them in a comment down below. I would love to hear them!
I hope you enjoyed this blog post of me babbling about my Camp NaNoWriMo lessons. If you participated in Camp NaNoWriMo 2020, congratulations on your win! If you lost, just keep trying. Trust me I know how it feels to fail too if you read this blog post. Happy writing!
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