An amazing end to Camp NanoWrimo

Well here are the final results for Camp NanoWriMo! It was a roller-coaster of a writing month and my entire cabin did an excellent job racing toward the finish line. I had so much fun sprinting with my cabin buddies on the weekends and sending little messages on our cabin page. Wouldn't it be cool if you could organize groups like that for November too? 

Now the month is over and a new May is upon us. Looking back at how far I've come with my novel just motivates me to keep on writing until it's done. I've learned a lot of things during this Camp:

1. Even with an outline and planning out each chapter, actually writing the scene still surprises me. And I've had good surprises - more conflict appears as my characters talk to each other, unexpected events make them learn how to survive in my world. It's becoming a real story and not a series of plot points. 
2. Info dumping in a first draft is okay. I have learned to give myself the freedom to write the scene as I see it, skip dialogue if I need to, and just do my best to move the scene forward. It gives me a great sense of progress. 
3. Writing every day is more important than the number of words that come out. This month I've kept a steady momentum of either taking hand-written notes, fleshing out my character profiles, or just simply writing a next scene. By doing so, I keep moving forward. 
4. Scrivener is awesome :D  It keeps all my scribbles organized
5. Cabin buddies are awesome!  Writing with a group also keeps me motivated to continue!

Let's do a little recap of how my novel is actually doing:

My entire manuscript to date:   55,794  words

Total scenes (instead of chapters):  85

Estimated number of words to finish the novel:  ....still around 20k

So where am I with my actual writing? 

THE MIDDLE

If I look chronologically at my novel, counting all the scenes that have been fully written, I'm right in the mid-point of my story. The point of no return, where the characters encounter a problem they can't ignore and make the decision to dedicate themselves to finding a solution.

Overall, I've planned all my scenes out, and each one that hasn't been written yet has at least 200 words of a basic outline. So I know how the rest of it goes, I have plot twists planned, an epic battle with the bad guy, and even introducing a new character towards the end (<-- which totally means I'm planning on a sequel, because this new character will be another MC).

Looking at how much I've written and the story is only "half" complete....I won't even entertain the thoughts of doubt or wondering how many words I'll have to cut. Because you know what? I've learned that THOSE things will come anyway.

I can always fix my story and edit it later - but I can't do anything with a blank page. 

Thus my novel writing will continue into the month of May. I'll reset my awesome progress bar here on my blog, making a new goal of 20,000 words this month. It was totally easy to smash through that in April, so that will be my new default writing goal. After I finish writing this blog post, I'm gonna copy/paste all the notes I took with my ipad into my manuscript. 

Yay for new word count!

I think....the next blog post I do will be about my characters. Maybe I'll post their headshot images and some character profiles. Honestly I don't know if I've really talked about what my novel is on my blog, just because I've wanted to figure that out for myself first. But now....yeah.....I think I can start showing off some novel-ly type things. We'll see what the next post will bring. 

Anyways, happy May and keep on writing!