Camp Pep: You Are All Exceptional

Camp NaNoWriMo is nothing without you, our incredible participants. Today, some pep, straight from a Camper’s mouth: 

Dear Campers,

I want you to close your eyes for just a moment and imagine your goal for this month. Think about how difficult it is going to be to achieve that goal, and how that is the absolute limit of what you can accomplish. That it is a cage that surrounds you. 

Now I want you to imagine that cage dissolving before your eyes, and striding across that finish line with more words than you could ever have imagined possible…

Here’s the thing: limitations are something we create inside of our own heads. The people who succeed ignore them. One of my college professors once said, “The brick walls are there to give us a chance to show how badly we want something.” The truly exceptional people in this world are going to look at limitations and laugh because while everybody else is busy talking about why you can’t do something, they are off making their dreams happen.

Everybody here is exceptional. You have dedicated time this month to put your writing first and to make that dream a reality. So vow to do six impossible things before breakfast and throw the idea of limitations out the window. See how far you can really fly once you give up the idea of what writing is supposed to be and start treating writing the way you want it to be.

You can write more in an hour. Turn off spell check and go challenge your cabin to a word war.

You can write more in a day. Make tomorrow a day of ridiculous goals and really get after your time management to blow past the most you’ve ever written in a day.

You can write more in a month. That big day you just did? What if you made that the normal for the rest of Camp? For the next NaNo event?

And if you think your goal is modest compared to those of others, realize this: there are millions of people who will never sit down to tell the story they have bubbling up inside them. What you are accomplishing this month is just as impossible to them as these seemingly impossible goals are to you. Every day you sit down to write, you are breaking down that brick wall. You are getting to see places that those who got stopped by that wall will never have the opportunity to see.

Victoria Webb is a believer in doing whatever it takes to accomplish your dreams and she thoroughly enjoys convincing others to join her in her madness. She will be releasing the first book of her Starsinger Chronicles series in early 2016. You can follow her on Twitter: @glyph27.

Top photo by Flickr user sophiagrrl.