July 2022 Camp NaNoWriMo Wrap-Up

Hey, everyone! I hope you’re all doing well. It’s been a wild few days. I got back from summer camp on Friday and spent the weekend adjusting to being back at home. I’ve been in a bit of a post-camp slump; coming back home after camp is a bit sad. Camp is this whole world where time works differently and then it’s all over.

Anyways, today I’m sharing a wrap-up for July Camp NaNoWriMo which I participated in last month.

How the month went

Overall, the month went really well. I worked on draft 4 of OMaM and made a lot of progress. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to finish the draft or hit my word count goal, which was 35k words. I ended up writing around 25.7k words, which isn’t bad, considering I had a busy schedule in July. I would’ve liked to have written more, but I’m still happy with what I did write.

I mentioned this in my mid-month check in, but I’m talking about it again. With draft 4, I changed a lot of the scenes to make them more realistic and less awkward. Major plot points were altered so that they were more believable and exciting to read. I also got rid of unnecessary filler scenes and added more detail to scenes that I thought were lacking in depth.

I think my dialogue is improving as well. I’ve been working on making the dialogue realistic and believable for what teenagers would say. I mean, I am a teenager, so it seems like it should be easier, but it takes a lot of work to figure out how a character should talk.

I mentioned in my other post that I’m working on developing my characters. I’m still working on that, but I’m happy to say that it’s coming along pretty well and that I’m also working on giving my side characters more depth. They’re definitely not perfect, but that’s okay.

What’s next

I’d like to continue to work on the draft and hopefully finish it in the next month or so. However, school starts today so I’m not going to have a lot of time to write. I don’t want to put stress on myself, so I’m not setting any specific goals. I’m aiming to work on it when I can.

I don’t actually know if this draft will even get me to 35k words. I still have a chapter or two left to write, plus the epilogue. I might get to 30k words, but I’m not sure if I’ll get past that. Cutting back on the filler scenes really decreased my word count. In a good way, though.

After I do finish writing draft 4, I plan to do revising and maybe get feedback from people. So far in my drafting process, the only people who have read them are me and my mom. I would like to widen the perspective.

All in all, I think the month went well. I was able to get a lot of writing done and made a lot of progress with revising OMaM.

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Have you ever participated in Camp NaNoWriMo? Are you working on any writing projects?