Wait a minute...ok, so I know I haven't updated/posted in a while...but I swear that I wrote an entire post on the outcome of August Camp NaNo.
I quite distinctly remember announcing to the world (i.e. everyone I could get to listen) what had happened, and that included writing a very excited blog post. I don't know where that post went, as it is not published or in drafts that I can see...
Hmph.
Well, this will not be nearly as exuberant as the original, since the excitement has worn off after a month.
But I won! Just barely! I reached 50k with approximately 30 seconds to spare, on August 31st, after writing for all available hours between 5:30 AM and 4 AM of September 1st. Ashamedly, I moved my time zone back to give me the extra 4 hours - however, 4 hours is a small amount compared to the two weeks during which I wrote nothing.
On that single waking day (I've given up on defining days as midnight to midnight - a day is from when I get up to when I go to bed), I wrote a grand total of 37924 words. I believe. The camp stats are a little wonky right now so I can't check that exactly. But it was a lot.
Granted, approximately 30k in, the quality of the story started going downhill, due to my severe lack of enough brainpower to work that fast. I reached the limit of plot that I had thought about and gone beyond a few times already, so I was just picking something to happen, even if it wasn't something that I liked or wanted to happen. By the end, the story was a disaster. So if/when I do go back to finish it, I'll be scrapping the last 10k or so. Majorly scrapping the last 1k (it was a hodgepodge of scene-y stuff just for word count, because I had less than an hour to finish and I didn't know what was happening next because I'd written myself into a corner).
Still, I liked the story until I made the wrong choice and led myself into a corner. Parts of it were even really good I thought. Obviously not great, since it's a first draft, but they had the potential to be great. So I wouldn't mind revisiting that.
Of course, the day after that I was exhausted, both physically and mentally (besides writing 38k words, I'd stayed up for over 24 hours). So I didn't write after that. And then school was in full swing, and I was immediately swamped in hw. How fun. Hopefully I'll have a chance to post and write more, even though it seems like my classes all collaborated to make sure I have an exam every week. So now I'm off to study for the statistics exam! :)
What's the largest number of words you've ever written in one day?
38K? That's impressive. Seriously. My personal best was 5K in a day before my brain decided to stop thinking.
ReplyDeleteDon't worry about the quality right now. When I was finishing up the draft for Jasper City I thought "what is this? I'm putting flashbacks in the middle of flashbacks. This isn't going to make any sense when I'm done!" But going through the second draft, I'm surprised. It's rough, but you'll find the quality is better than you thought. Just give your draft some time to breathe before you take another crack at it.
:D I'm hoping that it's like you said - it's not as bad as I think it is. But I don't really know, since I haven't even looked at it again yet. I was kind of tired of writing after that massive sprint. :)
DeleteWow that's amazing! And congrats for winning camp nano.
ReplyDeleteThe most I can write in a day is probably between 3-5 K before my characters decide to give up on me and not tell me anything. It's very exasperating when they do that but I'm kind of glad because it gives me a chance to go back to procrastinating.
And I agree with you about how restricting what people read can be wrong. It is after a violation of free speech. It reminds me of only letting the first graders read first grade books the second grade readers read second grade books and so on, in the reading club they had. The teachers wouldn't really let anyone else read books that wasn't part of the student's grade level. And that was annoying because what if the student wanted to challenge themself? What if he/she wanted to think more critically? But no, the person might not be 'smart' enough to read the more challenging books. Which is pretty dumb if you ask me.
:) thanks!
DeleteYes! Exactly! That was what happened to me - my kindergarten class could only pick the kindergarten books. I was in the "advanced" reading group, but we got some of the most boring books - not advanced at all.