As I mentioned in my recent update, to get into the Camp NaNo and NaPo mood, I’ll be telling a story about my experiences participating both years.
My first Camp NaNoWriMo, and NaPoWriMo, was in April of 2014. In spirit of the season, I’m going to share my first run experience.
NaNoWriMo 2013 was my first time participating (correctly), and I had so much fun I damn sure signed up and got ready for Camp in April. I ready-ed up for 25,000 words, said I wanted a cabin, all which was basically done in a state of emotional denial.
In March one Sunday night, I was forced to attend a Church Youth group gathering at a friend of my parents house. I wasn’t comfortable with the youth at that church, which is the sole reason I changed youth groups at that time. But that’s another story. This night, I sported my 2013 NaNoWriMo ‘winner’ shirt, which illedigally sparked the conversation between a friend and I on writing. She told me she didn’t do NaNoWriMo, but did NaPoWriMo, which I had never heard of, so I awkwardly nodded it off.
After that night, the next creative writing groups meeting, which was held online via the online school I “attended”, which I believe was that following Thursday, and same friend was also apart of, they introduced NaPoWriMo.
Poetry and I were enemys before this time. I struggled very greatly with the flow of rhyming and stringing such words in a flow of song and harmony. No. It just didn’t work for me. Weeks before this I had to write one for English honors (a poem in which was to Ginny from Harry, actually), in which was so embarrassing I hung my head in shame as my mom read it to me this past fall after coming across it a year and a half later. This idea didn’t sit well with me.
At this time, however, I was in a great state of emotional termoil, and decided a nice way to give myself a boost was a challenge, which this certainly will be. The following meeting, the last before April, evidently kicking off NaPoWriMo, I hopped on board and announced I would be participating.
Here’s where the real experience begins. In order to count as won, participating club members would log onto the clubs blog, which everyday had a prompt for both plot and poem type. For your entrys to count, it didn’t matter when you did this, as long as it was in the month of April and done by the 30th, you had to post your poems onto the forum.
I wasn’t particularly thrilled at this idea. But I grew the balls and did it. My horridenous, embarrassing poems I publically posted for my class mates to see. And it was fantastic.
No one made any comments. They went reletivally ignored, which is fine by me. But the fact that I, the socially anxious and argumentativly neurotic depressed teenager, doing the unimaginable to herself of posting poems to a forum out of sudden desperation. It was a madmans dream.
Now the prompts were optional; you didn’t have to follow them to post them on that post, but they were good guidelines, and served their purpose. I stuck to haikus and epic poems for the first portion, even though I did experiment with many varieties when they were recommended each day. Haikues and epics were my fall back.
Like my usual, I didn’t do it everyday, and did fall behind. On a folded piece of fucked up computer paper i wrote the prompt and poem styles I missed and stuck it in the cracks of my desk until I would grab my green college ruled notebook and write. Most of the time I would lounge out on the back porch in the humid Florida weather writing. Occasionally, I would talk to my friend and discuss this event.
I had so much fun. Honestly, it was one of the greatest decisions I have ever made, and I’m so glad I took part in it. To be able to discuss it with others and actually have a group to do this along with was incredible, especially since I took the initiative and broke out of my comfort zone for this. I had won that year, posting my last poem very sadly.
On a more pessimistic note, I did not win Camp NaNoWriMo that year. I was continueing the novel I worked on for NaNoWriMo (ironically the same book I worked on this past years NaNo, as well). I made mistakes, in which I was able to take away and make the following better.
One was taking advantage of the cabin settings. I had just clicked to be placed in a cabin. I’m not sure if they had advanced settings at that time; if they did, I was oblivious. Everyone was nice, but I was the only one under American drinking age, so I didn’t feel very well fit with my cabin, and didn’t use it very much. Even though thats a bad excuse, but sixteen year old me wanted to make friends, and at that time I didn’t see that happening with 21 to 64 year olds.
The second mistake was adding on to the already in progress story. I should have set up a new word document, but the obvious thing to do would continue where you left off, right? Yes, but it’s the most confusing, and yet not the best, route to detour on.
I would randomly write the last word written previously on a calander on my desk, and continue the paragraph. I would also write the word count i left off at, and would subtract that with the word count after that writing session in order to accurately update my word count. It was extremely confusing, and too much work,and very unorganized, which dettered my taste of the whole event.
After a while I wrote less and less, and just didn’t feel motivated to write, so after two weeks I stopped. I was about 15,000 words I believe. Maybe 12,000. Not too bad, but it wasn’t my best. I didn’t give it my best.
ghostystories 