NaNoWriMo Camp Sandwich: The Tuesday Bump

Earlier this year, we set up a standing write-in with one of our biggest supporters for the Denver region of NaNoWriMo.  Write-ins during NaNoWriMo in November are always so motivating and helpful for staying on track, that I figured I could stand to harness that momentum year-round.

We started the write-in along with the beginning of Camp NaNoWriMo in April, and so far it's been going really well.  In fact, while it helps me to stay on track the rest of the week, I usually write nearly as much (or a little more) on write-in days as I do the rest of the week combined.  I've been affectionately calling it the Tuesday bump, since you can see the dramatic increase in word count every Tuesday.

This screenshot of my graph is from before I worked on my novel yesterday, but you can clearly see when the past three write-ins were:

This one is the daily word count graph, but again, you can pick out the write-in days pretty easily.  (Plus, you can see Sunday's small "aha" moment, which I mentioned in my week 23 goals post.)

I don't know that the weekly write-in has been entirely responsible for keeping me going on this novel, but it has definitely helped.  Getting that massive word count bump every Tuesday helps me make more progress than I would be making otherwise, for one thing.  But the weekly standing write-in also helps me to keep the novel at the forefront of my mind, making it easier to stick to my goal of writing every day.  Without the weekly write-in, I'm pretty sure I would have taken "just one day" off by now, which would have turned into more, which would have turned into not working on the novel anymore.

Instead, I'm nearly finished with (and thoroughly enjoying) this novel.  When I took those screenshots yesterday, I had 78,601 words.  I wrote another 1,668 last night, hitting 80,000 (80,269).  And today is Tuesday, which means (you guessed it!) probably another considerable bump in word count is coming later this evening. 

So you could probably say that the Tuesday bump has saved this novel, and possibly Ruby as well, although the latter still remains to be seen.  I've always been a strong advocate for using NaNoWriMo to create lasting writing habits, but now I have to say, I recommend year-round motivators as well.  Whatever those might be for you, find them and utilize them!