Thursday 26 March 2015

The Camp Dash

Thursday 26 March 2015
So, the counterparts of NaNoWriMo (November) are fast coming up. Camp NaNo April/July are on the horizon. Specifically, Camp April is just over a week away. Ensue the normal panic of the participants who are still either a) trying to choose a project or b) trying to plan their chosen project. If you don't know, NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) runs in November and the goal is to write 50,000 words in one month. The Camp sessions are slightly different, running in the spring/summer and where you can set your own word count goal, and are also put into Cabins with other writers like in a camp!

Luckily for me, I have Easter holiday for pretty much all of April so I'm going for the whole 50,000 words as I will (hopefully) have lots of time for writing! I will be working on the second book in my dystopian trilogy, The Day The Sky Bled. I wrote the first book in Camp July last year and reached my 50,000 word goal. I had more time then, however, so I'm not sure I'll be able to get 50,000 this time, but I will give it my best shot!

I'm currently in that phase where I'm frantically planning, trying to tie all the strings together. When I do NaNo I like to have a very clear plan of what is going to happen in the book, or I know I will end up going off on a tangent or getting completely stuck. Both of which are pretty undesirable. I like to have a chapter-by-chapter plan of what is going to happen. Some of them are really vague e.g. "Stuff about Reeve looking for the inventor" is all I have written for one chapter, whereas some are more detailed if I have a particular scene/image in my head. I have been planning this series over a period of three years or so, so I've had time to work on and improve the plans, hopefully meaning the plot is pretty solid and well-planned before I even start writing.

I'll be at my Grandparents for the first week though. Going on holiday during NaNo is not the best of ideas. Because invariably you find some time to sit and write something and then the family decides to drag you out somewhere. Though it's usually pretty chilled when I'm at my Grandparents so hopefully I will have time.

The problem is when you get behind. Keeping roughly on track is so important because if you get evene a bit behind then it feels like you have a mountain to climb.

For fun, here is my history of NaNo participation:
-NaNoWriMo November 2011 ~ Nameless ~ 18,000 words
-NaNoWriMo November 2013 ~ The Water That Sings ~ 28,000 words
-Camp NaNoWriMo July 2014 ~ The Day It Rained ~ 50,000
-Camp NaNoWriMo April 2015 ~ The Day The Sky Bled ~ ???

M.T.

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