I
did not succeed in my word count goals for Camp NaNoWriMo in July. Real life
simply got in the way too often, and I quickly fell behind. I spent the rest of
the month writing, but it simply wasn’t enough to get the word count total back
where it needed to be. With that said, I feel that I walked away from last
month’s attempt with a better perspective (and more lessons learned) than I
have in the past.
It’s
easy to give up when you find yourself in a difficult position. When you know
that the end is beyond reach, and that nothing you do will see the effort
completed satisfactorily, the temptation to simply quit is very high. Yet
nothing else can be gained by giving up early. By pushing through to the end of
the month anyway, I was able to complete roughly 30,000 of the 50,000 planned
words. This is a huge chunk of my second novel that wasn’t written at the
beginning of the month. By staying true to the course, I was still able to
partially realize my goals.
I
also learned quite a bit about time management. I have been reading The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
this month as well, and it helped me to understand why my writing fell behind
so early in the month. In an effort to simply tick things off my list, I was
passing over the writing to complete other, less important tasks first. By
doing this I ran out of time to do my actual writing. By prioritizing it at the
beginning of my time, I found myself reaching the goal and exceeding it each
day. I also feel that it allowed me to write more proficiently, as I didn’t
feel a rush to reach some kind of arbitrary goal.
I
strive to learn from mistakes and losses throughout life, because I firmly
believe that we learn more in those instances than we ever can from our
successes. When something doesn’t go to plan, don’t simply throw it into your
past. Instead scrutinize the events that led up to the failure, so that you
might be better prepared in the future to address any similar issues that
arise.
