Wednesday, May 11, 2022

Surprise: I Wrote 100K In 29 Days to Beat Camp NaNo!

Yes, yes, I know I haven't been here in a while. It's been a really long time... not since about midway through February, actually. 

Though it's worth pointing out that I haven't been on Goodreads in longer... in fact, according to my GR Reading Challenge, I have only completed 3 books this year, which is somewhat embarrassingly close to the truth. (Okay, okay, so maybe it's higher than 3 by this point. But it's definitely not higher than 10, which is going to be a problem come December, considering that I had originally intended to read 60 books this year.) 

Even back in that February post on the blog, you can see pretty clearly that I'm bordering on desperate to try and scrape together some books to read, with a Readathon weekend. While I'm inevitably successful, the whole thing is tinged with this kind of icky feeling that I've been feeling in regards to one of my most long-running past times for a while now.

Part of this is simple: because I truly could not compel myself to read anything. And that totally sucks, because reading is something that I know is really, really good for me. As a kid, it was my major coping mechanism, one of the only things that helped propel me through days of school, being dragged along to my siblings' various events and extracurriculars, and spending lots and lots of time on my own. As an adult, it still serves as one of my primary means of relaxation, a kind of break from the rest of an overbearing reality. In my family, I'm the big "reader," and not reading for such an extended period of time started to wear on not just my mental health, but sense of identity. 

To give you a little more clarity as to what I'm talking about when I say "more than a Slump," here are three titles of blogposts I have seriously drafted in my absence.

The last book I really have finished was way back in March - a severely lackluster romance novel - and not only was it boring, overly simplistic, and honestly, not very good at all, but it's also the only book I actually managed to finish in that entire month. I also read a nonfiction book - about a man's memories of his family, and their food, which is usually a total ringer genre for me - and I genuinely was enjoying it, but only made it halfway through, because after returning home from vacation, I found myself totally not compelled to read it. 

So, instead of continuing to pound my head against a wall that I knew was just not going to budge, I decided to turn my attention somewhere totally different: towards writing instead. 

I was languishing in feelings of just total ineptitude and lack of motivation, sitting at my kitchen table on March 30th. Something fluttered around in my brain - like a torn sheet of paper, pinned to a corkboard above a heating vent - and I thought, "What if I decided to do Camp NaNo this year?" On impulse, I signed on, made a Project description, and even whipped up a fake book cover, which I do for all of my projects. In the end, the only way I knew I'd be really committed was if I brought someone else into it, too... so I texted my brother.

And that was it! The day before Camp started, and I was locked in. 

The reason I chose my brother as my solitary confidant, was because this particular Project also feels like it belongs to him: it's based off of a series of cooking lessons I gave him last summer, in anticipation of him moving into an off-campus apartment for the first time. He had never had to deal with his own kitchen - let alone roommates - before, and I was worried about his ability to meal plan and provide for himself all on his own... so I built out an entire eight-week curriculum, including a Midterm and Final, that incorporated all of the information I figured a total beginner needed to know.

I had subjected my brother to a total of eight cooking topics and their affiliated PowerPoint slide decks, each between 35 and 75 slides in length, allied with an accompanying eight weeks of Cooking Labs, in which he was tasked with shopping for and preparing an average of four to five recipes a week. I figured that working off of all of that material would manifest its way similarly to how I do my regular NaNo writing based off of incredibly detailed outlines.

I realized within a week, that it really, really worked: not only were all of those loosely collected documents definitely a functional foundation for this new format of writing, but I was able to utilize each of those bullet points and slides as a jumping-off point for paragraphs and paragraphs of text. Instead of feeling like I had to rake over the grooves of my brain and hope to collect enough words to arrange on a page, I felt like I was flying. 

And my brother was just the best about it. He cheered me on as I sent my updated numbers every single day - sometimes even multiple times a day - and acted appropriately flabbergasted when they started climbing by the thousands across only hours. 

I finished the 50K challenge in two weeks even. So I soon set my sights on loftier goals... and handily hit 100K words on Day 29 out of 30. 

And after I was finished, I sent a 3,000 word, gif-laden, self-aggrandizing email to my parents and all of my other siblings about it. Absolutely none of them had any idea I was working on something like this at all... not even an inkling that something was up with me. 

(Yes, this was slightly concerning, but I was so excited I was more than willing to overlook it.) 

  • Shortest Days: 186 / 185 words
  • Longest Day: 7039 words
  • Major Life Events: all-day volunteering with various local organizations, visits with friends, seeing two different family members in their various local theater productions, having my sister come up for a weekend, driving over to the Eastside to see my brother, attending our extended family's Easter Brunch. 
  • Major Distractions: changing out my Fall / Winter wardrobe for my Spring / Summer clothes, Food Network’s Tournament of Champions, Season 14 of RuPaul’s Drag Race, figuring out how to start my garden in a year where it just won’t stop hailing in Washington State.
  • Average per Day: Approximately 3,336 words (about six single-spaced pages per day, for 30 days straight)

Unlike my other NaNo challenges - which you can read about elsewhere on this site, including from back in November 2020 and November 2021 - or even my recent experiences with reading, absolutely zero percent of this situation was painful. In fact, far from it: the only way I even managed to get that much written was because I was having an absolute blast the entire time. Nothing was a slog, or a drag, or a curse, or a hurdle... in fact, I don't recall any other project I've worked on in recent memory that allowed me to have quite as much fun! 

Not only am I now refueled and ready to take on new challenges, but I'm so excited to continue supporting this developing manuscript of mine. Even during the process of writing, it was pretty incredible to see how it has all been coming together - even more so than my usual process with writing out 50K - and I already find myself coming up with more exciting ideas about how to go back, revise, and make it all even better again. I keep brainstorming concepts for new subchapters and elements that could be published online, and I spend my time daydreaming about one day, being able to make this a kind of pseudo-career. At the very least, a very joyous and time-consuming hobby

And believe it or not, I have hopes that sometime soon, my reading problem will recover, too. I've been thinking lately about my own propensity for taking part in various Summer Reading Challenges, and while there's no way I'm up for that level just yet, it might be nice to see exactly how much I can incorporate into other parts of my schedule in the next few busy months. 

For now, though, I'm enjoying where I'm at. I'm still writing a ton, volunteering my time and attention to local groups that have my heart, going to parties and spending time in our (rare) bouts of sunshine with friends, and most vitally of all, it's gardening season, and I've got some home improvement ideas to pitch to my parents that I'm sure they'll strike down without repentance (Composting system in the backyard? Adding a screen to the door on my balcony so I can keep it open in summer? New deck furniture so I can actually spend time sitting down outside without getting splinters in my jeans?). 

And of course, I have my manuscript to work on whenever I want it. And that's pretty damn exciting to think about. 


So, that's how I totally crushed Camp NaNo! Have you ever taken part in a non-November challenge? How did it go? Let me know, in the comments below!

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