With the beginning of March underway, the exciting yet daunting presence of Camp NaNo is back yet again. Camp in July 2013 was actually my first official NaNo event, and as an enthusiastic soon-to-be high schooler, I thought I would come out of it with a perfectly formed novel and publishing offers left and right. Boy, was I wrong.

Not only did I not write a single word that month, despite spending almost a week in June planning out meticulously what I wanted the story to be about (no actual story outlines, but plenty of scribbled on character worksheets, pinterest boards, and playlists), I was very much over the story before Camp had even begun.

I quickly learned my lesson, now knowing how to better conserve motivation and maintain excitement, and was able to come back stronger that year’s November NaNo for my first win! And thus started a long, complicated journey of me and NaNo. While I didn’t always win, and some of the months looked a lot like that first attempt due to a little too much ambition on my part, I did develop a tri-annual habit of working on my writing for at least a bit.

Now that I’m done with school, and only have to balance writing with my job, my relationship with NaNo has changed. Even outside of NaNo, I try to make it a goal to write at least a little every day, and while the inherent focus that NaNo brings is welcome, it’s not as necessary. I still wait in anticipation on Halloween or the night before camp, watching the hours tick down until I can officially start my word count, but the anticipation feels different. Instead of being excited to start a new project (or get back to something I’ve forgotten about enough to feel excited about again), I’m excited to ramp up my work and finish up some of the projects that I’ve been continuously working on for weeks and sometimes months beforehand.

Before NaNo 2020, I hadn’t ever truly “finished” a story. I had written 50,000 words and won NaNo several times, but as soon as my word count crossed the finish line, my brain switched off and I looked for the quickest and easiest way to wrap the book up, no matter how awful it was. Once I had spare time in my schedule, and hit the 50,000 words with plenty of days to spare, the urge to just scribble down whatever got me done quicker lessened significantly. Enough so, that I pushed on and wrote another 10,000 words to wrap the story up in the way it deserved.

While I used to look forward to the start, to create a new, magical world during NaNo, I’m now appreciating the satisfaction in finishing not just because you’ve hit the goal, but because the story is over. Before the past few years, I might not have even noticed I was doing this. After all, my stories had an ending, no matter how haphazardly written it was. But now that I’ve started paying attention to my story arcs, tracking all of my subplots, and pre-planning out a logical ending that is actually supported and foreshadowed by previous events, I’m able to tell just how incomplete my other projects were.

So, with the excitement of progress, and the goal to finish my manuscript, I’m here to announce my Camp NaNo Project for 2022: Watch Me Sink.