Camp NaNoWriMo Wrap-Up

I did it! Even though Murphy’s Law was in full effect for much of the month, I logged 101,095 words in the month of July! In theory, it shouldn’t have been that hard; I mean, that’s just 25 days at 4k words daily, which is generally doable for m. But did I write 25 days? Of course not!

I had the Windows 10 debacle around mid-month, and then the last few days, my equipment started going haywire. First, the left-click button on my mouse died, and our trucking schedule has been such that there was no time to go shopping for a new one. So I switched to my laptop keyboard (normally I use a separate wireless keyboard) and its touchpad mouse. A bit of a pain, but doable. Until my backspace key stopped working.

I didn’t realize how much I used it. It seems I type very fast, making mistakes every few words (my typing teacher is somersaulting in her grave, I’m sure), but I correct them as I go, so quickly I don’t even notice it. Until I don’t have a backspace key. And I can’t just let the errors stay, since those red squiggly lines drive me crazy.

Thus hindered, I still managed to write over 6k words on Friday and Saturday each. It took about twice as long as normal, and 6k is already outside my comfort zone, so by the time I finished Saturday evening, I collapsed. When I checked into our cabin on Sunday morning, I saw we were less than 1k from our cabin goal, so I quickly wrote one more little chapter. THEN I really collapsed, as in, I was done until this morning.

Since I edit as I go, all those words aren’t complete crap either. I’m at about 140k total for Winter of the Wolf, and estimate I’m at roughly the 2/3 mark. Problem is, I can’t fit in all the story I want, so that means another book in the series, probably. Ugh.  I’m especially worried because today is the 20th anniversary of the publication of the first Game of Thrones book, and George R.R. Martin noted that his initial plan had been a trilogy, with each book taking a year to write. Twenty years later, he’s still working on the sixth of (maybe) seven books. The very idea of this kind of mission creep fills me with foreboding.

But on the bright side, when I got to work this morning, both mouse and backspace key (which I don’t need if I have the mouse) are working splendidly. Maybe they just got tired of typing before I did.

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