I am once again blogging at Google + on my writing experience during a NaNoWriMo event, this time Camp NaNoWriMo. I’ve never participated in Camp NaNo before, and it’s different from the November event fer sure. It’s casual and uses camping motifs. I’m not posting every day like I did before, but here are the ones for the opening weekend.
I hadn’t written the minimum number of words, I realised, when I checked the word count in iA Writer after I’d finished my first chapter. Do I try and add more or make up the word count tomorrow? Oh, what the heck, the scene could use more details, maybe stretch out the bickering between the first two characters of my story. Sometimes word count goals are useful. The scene, I think, is much better for adding another 200 words. But still I’m short 59 words. Oh well. I’ll make THOSE up tomorrow.
Oh yeah, didn’t I mention? I’m in Camp NaNoWriMo! The summer version of the annual National Novel Writing Month that I participate in every November, for the last three years anyway. I thought I would try this new event in June with a lighter kind of novel, one that doesn’t require extensive background reading or research. I need a break after all the physics I learnt (and relearnt) last summer!
I wasn’t sure how it’d go, if I could do it at this time of year, especially as I have other books I’m supposed to be revising and preparing. But I’m liking it — so far. I’m feeling pretty peppy after typing out 1,609 words using my Apple Bluetooth keyboard. No way I could type out that many words using the iPad’s onscreen typepad. Let’s hope tomorrow goes as well!
(Check out the comment on G+.)
When I awoke this morning, I absolutely didn’t feel like writing, mostly because apart from a couple of lines, I had no idea what I’d write. Plus I hadn’t decided on two of the characters’ human names yet, and I needed them now, that is, if they were going to appear in the last chapter. Of course, I got out my iPad anyway and began writing, whether I wanted to or not. Camp NaNoWriMo was bustling with activity and calling me to get in on the action.
The two nameless characters had to appear at the start of the chapter. I wrote and hoped their names would appear on the screen like magic. Well, not like magic, but close enough, long enough to get the main action of this final chapter going. I say “final” because I usually start writing my novels wih the last chapter. I like to know where I’m going. This month was slightly different in that I began with the first chapter, or probably more like the prologue, because I needed to know where I was starting before I could know for sure where I’d be ending up.
More words today than yesterday, yay! 1,846
