Well, ROW80 round 1 ended yesterday. And I believe Round 2 starts April 7th and runs through the end of June.
As we’ve previously discussed, I set a goal of 50K on my current writing project, the third book of a high fantasy trilogy. And I managed my 50K at a rather reasonable time on Tuesday evening, so that was lovely. Didn’t have to panic about it or anything. That leaves me probably around 26K to go in the draft (the document’s sitting at just over 74K now).
Having now completed ROW80, I’ve got to say I enjoyed it quite a bit. It doesn’t have the frenetic energy that Nano has, but it worked well with the level of responsibility and work I currently have in my life. And I feel very accomplished. Plus, I enjoy the check-in system, and it was nice to occasionally get visits here at ye olde blogge from other people participating in the challenge.
That being said, I’m going to sit round 2 out. One of the things that I’ve learned from many, many years of writing challenges is that it’s not worth it to stuff one into your schedule just because of the principle of the thing. It stresses you out and makes you unhappy, and why do that to yourself?
I’ve only got 26K left in the book (or somewhere around there unless it blows up unexpectedly here). That’s not enough for 80 days, and I don’t like to do multiple projects during one challenge because 1) it becomes increasingly difficult to keep track of your progress and tell if you’re on track, and 2) experience tells me that, if I finish something, I tend to take a break rather than move on to the next thing.
Plus, my husband and I are taking a trip in that timeframe (to Japan! 😀 ) and that just adds another kink.
So, I’ve signed up for Camp Nanowrimo instead. I’m not a huge fan of camp; I’m not wild about their cabin system, especially because this year they’ve made the cabins enormous. But it will probably help keep me on track for what I want to accomplish.
Once I finish this draft, it’s off to the betas and I probably won’t touch it for several months. I figure I’ll jump into editing a YA paranormal novel of mine, and can probably use that for Round 3, depending on my progress there. (Round 3 I assume goes sometime from early July through the end of September.)
Did you do ROW80, Squiders? How’d it go? Jumping in for round 2 or Camp? What are you working on, and how is it going?
