Saturday, 10 May 2014

It's Time to Put the Tent Away and Get Back to Reality



Well, it has been ten days since this year's April session of Camp NaNoWriMo drew to a close. Over 300,000,000 words were written by over 25,000 participants. 15,000 of those words were mine.

I started Camp with a 25,000 word goal. I based it off of my November NaNo word count of 28,000. But, April proved to be a month of busy weekends (including a belated birthday party) and lazy days. So, towards the end of the month, I dropped my word count goal to a more obtainable 15,000. Seeing the word, WINNER, come up on my screen was both exciting and a relief. It's the first time since I started participating in NaNo in 2012 that I have won. But that wasn't my only accomplishment.

In early 2009, I started writing a Power Rangers fanfic. When I began it, I didn't really know where I was going with it, but the more I wrote, the more the ideas flowed and came together. This fanfic would come to be called The Power of Friendship, and it would very quickly be posted on fanfiction.net. Well, this April's Camp NaNo saw the completion of that fanfic, including an alternate version of one chapter. The Power of Friendship is a fanfic I quickly grew to be proud of and to love writing. I almost didn't want it to end. But end it had to. My journey of writing it won't truly be over for another couple days as I haven't yet posted the final chapters. Once I do, then my journey will end. In truth, I'm sad to see it end, but I'm also happy it has. Now, the readers who have followed it will have a completed story to entertain themselves with. If you're a Power Rangers fan as I am, and wish to read it, you can read it here: The Power of Friendship

To those of you who crossed the finish line and made your word count goals: CONGRATULATIONS! *throws confetti* You did it!!! You made your goal! You deserve a giant scoop of whatever your favourite sweet is!

To those of you who didn't quite make your word count goals: CONGRATULATIONS! *throws confetti* You did it!!! You have written more words than you had in March, and that's something to celebrate. You also deserve a giant scoop of whatever your favourite sweet is!

Writing is both easy and difficult. It is a labour of love as well as labour of hurt. When we really get into the groove, we can forget to eat and sleep until our stomachs are on the verge of eating themselves and we are falling asleep with our heads on our keyboards or our laptops in our laps. We can lose track of time and lose our touch with reality for a few hours. However, there are days when the coffee flows far better and more often than our words do. Those days are hard and frustrating. But, we get through them and can produce some magical things.

I hope the month of April and these first few days of May have been kind to you.

Until next time!

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