The Journey Continues

Well, it's not two thirds of the way through the July session of Camp Nano 2012.  At the beginning of the month many people took up the challenge to write fifty thousand words, willing to put aside their daily lives in an effort to accomplish this feat.  Each of them was excited, nervous and determined to accomplish this seemingly impossible goal that they set out for themselves.

I, personally, love the idea of Camp Nano.  It gives us months other than November where we have the excuse to cast off the obligations of every day life and focus on our writing.  Unfortunately, as it's only the second year that OLL has offered Camp Nano, it still isn't nearly as popular as the much loved original November session of NaNoWriMo.  It's not quite the all out affair November is.

As a result, many of those determined writers have suddenly realized that they don't have enough time left in the month to finish those stories.  I believe that even now those who have fallen behind have the time to complete their novels, but another disease has spread throughout many of those brave writers.  Loss of motivation.

While I've heard that the second week is always the hardest to get through, I'm starting to feel like maybe the third week has it's own hardships.  People are finishing their novels and not feeling the need to continue on.  So those writers that aren't done lose a little bit of that support and excitement that has kept them going for this long.

Our novels are getting to the point where we've lost all hope of them being good, but we're still pushing through them, repeating to ourselves the mantra that we've developed by taking these crazy journeys through the landscapes of the worlds we've created.  'You can edit crap, you can't edit nothing.'

Now is the time when we need to band together.  For those of us that are ahead, it's up to us to encourage those that are behind.  For those that are behind, it's up to you to use that encouragement and find that lost motivation.  Because, even though writing is a solitary activity, Camp Nano brings us together as a community to push us through the hardest part of writing: getting through that first draft.

While I'm ahead for the month, I was hoping to do a lot more.  I'm only about 30k into my current novel, which means I need another 70k to finish it.  Like many others, though, I seem to have been contracted the loss of motivation.  Mine, of course, could potentially be because I finished what I thought I would at the beginning of the month.  I started a second book for the fun of it, but with no plan I appear to be stalling out.  The competition I'd managed to find at the beginning has disappeared.  Now I find myself listless.  Unwilling to continue writing knowing that I've already finished what I set out to accomplish.

I know I'm going to have to push through this feeling.  Just sit down and get writing.  I can do it.  I've done it before, and I'll probably do it again.

In the mean time, I intend to support any of my fellow campers who are behind but still want to finish.  I believe that every writer has this fifty thousand words in them, and I hope to see every one of them cross the finish line.

Until then, though, I have some writing to do of my own.  Good luck, fellow writers!  I hope to see you at the finish line.  Breathless, tired and ready to give up, but triumphant and ready to continue on the journey that Camp Nano has put us all on.