Camp NaNo!
Mar. 31st, 2021 10:55 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
starfishstarI signed up for Camp NaNoWriMo! Yes, at long last, I've officially signed up for a NaNoWriMo event. Let's see if I immediately regret this as soon as April arrives...which technically is in a few minutes... No, I don't think I'll regret it. :-)
For years, I've wanted to do proper actual NaNoWriMo (meaning, the full 50k deal, in November) but my life is never in a place where it seems possible. And as for Camp NaNoWriMo (which happens in April and July, and can be for smaller word goals) apparently each time I either forget, or I don't know what else. So this year, I put a note into my calendar to remind me to look into Camp NaNo before April. ...Unfortunately, where I put that note in my calendar was on March 30, which didn't exactly give me a lot of lead time to ponder my options and get to know the platform and everything. But I did it! I signed up!
My goal for this April is 15,000 words – a very modest goal. (It's literally where I started the very first time I set a month word count goal – in January 2017 – and then I spent the next years working up to gradually higher word counts each time I did that sort of thing again. (Jan 2017: 15,500 words, April 2017: 20,000 words, Nov 2018: 20K/nearly met my stretch goal of 30K, Nov 2018: 10K/met my stretch goal of about 14K despite my life having imploded shortly beforehand. But life has continued to be sort of implode-y ever since, so I'm very okay with a modest goal this time around.)
As for what specific project I'll be working on... I've been gradually working my way back into the world of writing, after having had to grind everything to a halt in favor of finishing my dissertation last year. So, last summer first I did a very small-scale flash fiction month. Then I haltingly lurched my way somewhat back into fic, thanks entirely to the fests whose deadlines forced me to write (Torchwood Fest, HP Halloween, Yuletide, Holmestice, Purimgifts). Then, since the start of the year, I've been doing a bunch of online workshops (I've had a writing workshop every single Wednesday since the start of January, plus a bunch on various Thursdays as well...) and have used that as an opportunity to focus on original fiction and generate some new ideas for the first time in a long while.
I'm a little burned out on constant workshops, though, so I figured April and Camp NaNo are the perfect chance to make myself focus in on one longer project, rather than jumping around so much. I'm gonna unearth one of those "maybe it's a novel or something?" ideas that I've had lurking for several years now, dancing around it and talking about it and playing with bits of it in workshop exercises, but never quite feeling like I had the time to commit to it fully. So, as of tomorrow, I'll start writing stuff and see what happens.
Wish me luck!
For years, I've wanted to do proper actual NaNoWriMo (meaning, the full 50k deal, in November) but my life is never in a place where it seems possible. And as for Camp NaNoWriMo (which happens in April and July, and can be for smaller word goals) apparently each time I either forget, or I don't know what else. So this year, I put a note into my calendar to remind me to look into Camp NaNo before April. ...Unfortunately, where I put that note in my calendar was on March 30, which didn't exactly give me a lot of lead time to ponder my options and get to know the platform and everything. But I did it! I signed up!
My goal for this April is 15,000 words – a very modest goal. (It's literally where I started the very first time I set a month word count goal – in January 2017 – and then I spent the next years working up to gradually higher word counts each time I did that sort of thing again. (Jan 2017: 15,500 words, April 2017: 20,000 words, Nov 2018: 20K/nearly met my stretch goal of 30K, Nov 2018: 10K/met my stretch goal of about 14K despite my life having imploded shortly beforehand. But life has continued to be sort of implode-y ever since, so I'm very okay with a modest goal this time around.)
As for what specific project I'll be working on... I've been gradually working my way back into the world of writing, after having had to grind everything to a halt in favor of finishing my dissertation last year. So, last summer first I did a very small-scale flash fiction month. Then I haltingly lurched my way somewhat back into fic, thanks entirely to the fests whose deadlines forced me to write (Torchwood Fest, HP Halloween, Yuletide, Holmestice, Purimgifts). Then, since the start of the year, I've been doing a bunch of online workshops (I've had a writing workshop every single Wednesday since the start of January, plus a bunch on various Thursdays as well...) and have used that as an opportunity to focus on original fiction and generate some new ideas for the first time in a long while.
I'm a little burned out on constant workshops, though, so I figured April and Camp NaNo are the perfect chance to make myself focus in on one longer project, rather than jumping around so much. I'm gonna unearth one of those "maybe it's a novel or something?" ideas that I've had lurking for several years now, dancing around it and talking about it and playing with bits of it in workshop exercises, but never quite feeling like I had the time to commit to it fully. So, as of tomorrow, I'll start writing stuff and see what happens.
Wish me luck!
