Chapter Book Challenge 2013 Wrap-Up #ChaBooCha

Today marks the last day of the 2013 Chapter Book Challenge.  Not only am I wondering how everyone did, but, if you managed to write a complete first draft between March 1st through March 21st, please send me an e-mail or comment on this post letting me know, and you will be sent a winner badge to display on your website or blog as well as receiving a link that will take you to a hidden section of the Chapter Book Challenge store where you can buy "Chapter Book Challenge 2013 Winner" merchandise. Besides, it would be fun to look at the percentage of how many of us managed to do it.

Don't feel badly if you didn't complete a first draft in the month of March. I know some of you joined without any intention of completing a first draft. Some of you joined just to keep up to date with the guest posts and to learn from them. Some of you joined for the great community of like-minded writers that being a part of this challenge brings to you (especially if you joined the Facebook group). Some of you joined in order to get that extra push to finish a draft you had already started. Some of you joined for the chance to win prizes, which included a lot of helpful books on the craft of writing. Some of you joined in order to get help fleshing out your book idea, and some of you joined just to get further along with the writing of your book. And others joined for completely different reasons. For whatever reason you joined, we were happy to have you and for however far long you got with your goals, well done! Any progress is good progress.

If you have joined the Facebook group or "liked" the Facebook page, both will continue to be active throughout the year. Blog posts will continue throughout the year, although much less frequently until just before next March (2014), but they will no longer be e-mailed out to everyone again until the 2014 challenge begins.

If you are officially signed up now, you will remain signed up for next year and will not need to sign up again to join in 2014. Sign-ups for 2014 are allowed to start early, so if you know anyone who might like to be a part of the challenge in 2014, please tell them about us. It is thanks to word of mouth that this challenge grew from 23 members last year to nearly 100 members this year.

For those of you who would like one, I have some Chapter Book Challenge 2013 large thank you postcards that I am willing to send out to participants, but I will need mailing addresses to do so. Do not leave your mailing address in the comments. Instead, e-mail me your name and mailing address and I will do my best to mail you out the postcard. Don't be shy about it, because I already have the 2013 postcards and need to get them sent out.

I have the files to create your own informative postcards that explain all about the Chapter Book Challenge and use this year's badge. If anyone would like those files to print up your own postcards to hand out, let me know and I will e-mail them to you.

Thank you to all of our authors and agents who took the time to write up guest posts for the challenge and thank you to everyone who signed up for the challenge and participated in making this ChaBooCha the best one so far!

For those of you who did not finish your story, I have some news about this year's Camp NaNoWriMo. It starts tomorrow, on April 1st, and it has much looser parameters this time. This year, you can join and set your own word count goal and you can even use a story that you have already started to meet your goal. For example, I have a story that is intended to be a novelette that I wrote early last year. I need it to be at least 25,000 words long. It is, so far, at 17,874 words. I've decided to shoot for 25,000 or 30,000 words, which means I need to set my word count goal at 7,126 to 12,126 words. And yes, I am joining this year's Camp NaNoWriMo in order to do exactly that. ChaBooCha is not affiliated with NaNoWriMo, but that doesn't mean I can't recommend it.

And for anyone who might be wondering, I managed, by the last day of the challenge, to finish the first draft of my chapter book story, writing a total of 10,061 words.

So remember to e-mail me to let me know if you "won," to send me your mailing address so you can receive a large thank you post card and to let me know if you want the files to make your own informative Chapter Book Challenge postcards in order to spread the word.

Happy writing!