Hi hello! I'm back! Last week's post was interrupted by the funny coincidence of me receiving my copy of Rule of Wolves in the mail, so that consumed my entire Friday. But more on that later. Today, I'm here to talk about Camp NaNoWriMo!! Because it's April, which means I am once again embarking upon the perilous journey of writing a book in a month.
So if you don't know, Camp NaNoWriMo is basically a more casual version of the regular November National Novel Writing Month. Camp is great because it lets you set your own word count goal, rather than defaulting to 50k. 50,000 words in a month is HARD, so for Camp I typically set my goal anywhere between 30-40k, depending on whether I'm drafting or revising.
I was going to draft this month, and set aside everything to write a completely new book (dear, dreaded Necromancer Book...sigh), but. Alas. That did not work out. The first week of April was a MESS and I got pretty much nothing done. I scratched out a few hundred words, then got caught up in the hot mess that is this damn book. I have no idea what this book wants from me, and now I don't really know what I want from it, so we're not on speaking terms. Again.
Someday... SOMEDAY I will conquer Necromancer Book. Today is not that day. Or month.
Instead, I'm going back to TRUTHSEEKER, the first book in my Peacebringer Trilogy that I drafted at the end of last year/beginning of this year. I let it marinate for a few months and put some distance between us, and now I'm ready to go back and tackle the changes I want to make. Already it's going so much more smoothly than Necromancer Book, and it feels good to be back with a world I know and characters that are familiar and yet new. I'm excited to see where the book takes me this time, and can't wait to see what secrets it has in store for me. I really do learn something new every time I rewrite a book, so I'm sure by the time I'm at the end of this draft, it'll have transformed into something totally new.
As long as we're on the topic of Nano, I thought I'd offer a few tips for kicking its butt. I've been doing Nano for years, so I forget how daunting it can be to stare a novel in the face and think about writing the whole thing in a month.
1. Write first, edit later. This applies to writing all the time, not just Nano season, but it's especially important when you're trying to get through a draft in a month. Just get the words on the page and don't worry if they're not perfect. First drafts are meant to be a mess. That's why we go back and revise and rewrite later. For now, for the sake of efficiency, just write.
2. Make it a routine. If you track your writing on the NaNoWriMo website, it provides a handy tool that tells you how many words you have to write a day to reach your goal in time. Mine is a little skewed right now because I fell behind last week, but it's currently telling me that to reach my 40k goal by April 30th, I need to write at least 1441 words a day. That's pretty close to what I aim for normally, so as long as I find time every day to sit down, set a timer, and get those words down, I should be on track to hit my goal by the end of the month. I try to write at the same time every day, usually before I do anything else, and that really helps me stay on track.
3. Be nice to yourself. If you've never taken a swing at Nano before, it can definitely be intimidating. Set your goal as low or high as you want. Hell, set it way low so you get a rush of accomplishment if you hit the goal after the first week. You can always go back and change it later if it's too low or high.
The Nano site also keeps track of your progress as a writing streak, telling you how many days in a row you've updated your word count. If you're like me, and get obsessive about streaks, here's a little trick: lie to it. Some days I just do not have time to write, or maybe I don't have the energy, or maybe I need to step away for a day or two to sort out some plot things. But I hate seeing that streak break, especially since Nano awards you badges for keeping up your streak. So if I have a day where I can't write actual words, I record that I wrote 3 words. Some days those 3 words are "mental health day." Other days they're "no braincell today." It's a low enough number that it won't skew my stats, and it's just enough to say I wrote something. But also remember that it's OKAY to not write every day!
4. Have a plan. Even if you're a pantser, I promise that Nano is made easier if you at least have some kind of idea of where you want the story to end up by the end of the month. Maybe you don't even know the ending, but you know some aspect of the plot that has to be reached eventually. Use that as a map! I find it helpful, at the start of each new chapter, to jot down notes of what I think needs to happen in that chapter. It keeps me on track and helps me focus. Your writing will likely flow a lot better if you have a specific goal each time you sit down to write.
5. NaNoWriMo is a starting point, not the finish line. Again, writing a whole book in a month is HARD. Even if you hit your goal, you might not be done with the book, but that's okay! You made a ton of awesome progress in just 30 short days, and now you have the motivation to sprint ahead to the end of that story! Right?? YEAH!! So don't worry about finishing during Nano; use the time to fall in love with a new project and build great new writing habits.
All right. Those are the most helpful things I can think of, that I often have to remind myself each time Nano rolls around. But yeah! It's fun! I love a good writing challenge! And if you want, add me as a buddy on the Nano site!
If you follow me on Twitter and/or Instagram, you might also see me (poorly) keeping up with a series of daily prompts related to writing/NaNoWriMo. One of my Twitter mutuals hosts a Nano-adjacent event called #LGBTQWriMo that brings a whole bunch of queer writers together to connect over writing! I am REALLY BAD at keeping up with daily prompts/Q&A types of things, but I'm doing my best to answer them every day. It's fun! And encourages me to keep up a regular social media presence (which like ughhh but it's necessary I guess).
What I'm Reading: Lmao. So I am literally reading 4 books at once right now, not because I am successfully reading, but because I am in a terrible, terrible reading slump and can't settle on one thing that I want to read. I've got about 100 pages left of Rule of Wolves by Leigh Bardugo, and on god this is the SLOWEST I have ever gotten through a Bardugo book. Pitiful. Also lol remember how I said I was doing a Grishaverse reread? That, ah, didn't work out so well oops. I'm also working my way through Ravage the Dark by Tara Sim (the sequel to Scavenge the Stars), and I am loving it but there's so much ~plot intrigue~ that I have to take it like a chapter at a time so that's been slow going. I also just started Raybearer by Jordan Ifueko, and Sweet and Bitter Magic by Adrienne Tooley, both of which are awesome so far! Will this be the week I actually finish a book? We'll see. No promises.
What I'm Writing: I just finished a big round of revisions on THE DEMON MAGE, and I am so much happier with this book!! I plan to submit it to #RevPit tomorrow, and if that doesn't pan out, I'm diving back into the query trenches. I'm actually excited!! I'm much more confident in this book and, idk, I have good feelings and high hopes. And like I said earlier, I'm back to working on TRUTHSEEKER this month. Time to dive into this second draft!!
Check out my debut fantasy novel, THE ORACLE STONE, available now in ebook and paperback from Amazon! If you like adventure, quest narratives, found family, and that good ol' "we have to work together because we have a common goal but I'm not going to be happy about it" trope, you'll find something to love in these pages!
You can also add it on Goodreads!
Thanks for reading! See you next week!
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