The Last Day of Camp
It's 5 a.m. on the last day of Camp NaNoWriMo, and instead of sitting in my usual early morning writing spot at the kitchen island surrounded by papers, books, pacifiers and sippy cups, I am asleep in my bed, quietly celebrating having met my goal of writing for 60 hours this month.
I had planned to spend the month at camp revising my current work in progress and getting started on some short story ideas I've had kicking around. And while I put in the time, I didn't get everything done I had hoped. Not even close, really.
I'm not upset about it though. I may not have finished my revisions, but I enjoyed the process, and I have much clearer idea of what kind of changes I need to make. I didn't write those short stories, but it was because I got a brand new idea so I worked on that for several days and enjoyed the excitement of random inspiration. I also launched my website a week before camp, so some of my hours were dedicated to writing blog posts. So while I didn't finish all the items on my to-do list, I did get plenty of work done and learned some lessons along the way.
I think I was fairly overambitious about what I could accomplish in the time I had (#storyofmylife). I'm getting better about that, but I'm still learning to set goals based on what is actually possible given the reality that two little humans depend on me to sustain their lives, so there will be an inevitable hiccup or two. I did write for 60 hours, but they were hours interrupted by requests for milk, help finding toys, and assistance on the potty.
The fact is that I have a fairly limited amount of time to devote to writing, so I'm doing my best to figure out how to make that time more effective. And this year's camp taught me an important lesson. I thought setting a time goal would be helpful since I knew I wouldn't be writing a ton of new words, but what ended up happening was that I became so focused on putting in the time that I sacrificed sleep, and therefore didn't work as efficiently as I would have if I had slept more.
I've been listening to the audiobook Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less by Greg McKeown. One section of the book talks about the importance of sleep to the creative process, but that we've been conditioned to believe that sacrificing sleep for work will give us better results. McKeown asserts that we will work better, smarter, and more effectively if we have given adequate time to sleep. I feel like he's on to something.
Camp NaNoWriMo may be over, but my project is far from done. I think I'll spend May sleeping more and writing less, but hopefully writing better.
Congratulations to all my fellow Wrimos for making it to the end of the month! Already looking forward to going back to camp in July!