I’m Going Camping

I’ve not abandon this blog, but the posts in it have yellowed and grown somewhat irrelevant.  Distractions abound in all of our lives, and we all try to do the best we can, but my writing has suffered more than other aspects of my life due to all of the unscheduled pit stops I’ve had to endure in the last few years.  I have finally said enough is enough and so here I am again.

In order to help me get going again, I’ve signed up to do CampNanoWriMo this April.  A few years ago, I did NanoWriMo proper and finished my 50,000 novels in two of three attempts. The resulting novels needed a lot of rewriting and I abandon them because they needed more work than I thought the story ideas merited.  As an editor, I’m very hard on my works which I think is a good trait to have.  Unfortunately, my editor is a maniacal perfectionist and I rarely finish a work that is up to the editor’s standards.

Which is another reason I’m going Camping.  My goal is 30,000 words.  The work I’m writing is intended to be a novella, so I’ve no qualms about not going for 50,000 words.  The lower word count should allow me to write a little slower and leave myself less of a cleanup job at the end.  At least, that’s what I hope.

If anyone else is doing CampNanoWriMo, the best advice I can give is to meet that daily word count every day so you don’t get behind.  If possible, put a hundred or so extra words in the bank just in case you really get stumped somewhere down the line.

And to prevent being stumped, always, I mean every day when you have finished your words, make at least some kind of note about what you will be writing the next day.  This works best if you have an outline, but even if you don’t,  a little bit of planning goes a long way.  The worst thing in the world is to have a satisfying writing session and then to sit down the next day and have no idea where you’re going to go next.

Have a great day and maybe I’ll see you at Camp.

Gina