Camp NaNoWriMo Victory – Lessons Learned

I officially finished Camp NaNoWriMo is epic style. Out of my goal of 40,000 words, I managed 66,319 so 166% of my goal.

I also managed to exceed the regular NaNoWriMo standard 50K.

I also managed to write more than I have ever written in a single month.

Now that my mind was finally in the first place for some iteration of NaNoWriMo, what did I learn?

I should not pants. This time around, I created a Draft Zero (which I will have an article on later) and I absolutely loved it. I felt so in control and I knew I was keeping my words. Whenever I pants, it’s like having to write seventeen drafts of the same book and then picking out the good bits to sew together–in reverse order. It was just awful. I have a 13,000 word outline to get me going and, while I’m not done, it worked well for me.
Races are weapons of mass word construction. I had word wars with over twenty different people. Some in person, some at cafes, some online, some in a word warrior chat room. I love it. Dedicating the time to race someone is a win-win, really. You get words down, they get words down.
Always encourage your pals. While my cabin and I didn’t get along great (It is not like Survivor–you do not get to vote someone out!), I had a network of people doing Camp Nano and we would all sympathize if something went awry or cheer when stars aligned.
Find a system for tracking words that works for you. I used to try and keep track of all my words on an excel spreadsheet but having that program open wasn’t conducive to my writing. Now, I have a cute agenda that I write my totals in for the day and which project I worked on for those words. It keeps me on track and I get to measure my week’s effort.
As a subset of the last one, Scrivener rocks. I finally got around to using the program intensively for a fiction project. I learned how to use the word count progress bars and I fell in love.

So now that I have finished NaNo, I have some winner goodies. However, I already have Scrivener. So I would love to give away my 50% off scrivener code to a commenter! What did you learn from your last round of NaNo? Doesn’t have to be this round. Just any round!

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Also, I want to wish a very happy birthday to our very own Elisa!!!!

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