This Camp NaNo: My Stay Home and Rhyme project

Camp NaNoWriMo: write a novel in 30 crazy days. This year, Camp NaNo comes at a good time for writers who are self-isolating and staying at home during the COVID-19 crisis. It’s an opportunity to take your mind off the outside world and create your own fictional one to live in for a few hours a day.

I’ve attempted National Novel Writing Month and the accompanying April and July Camp NaNo “practice sessions” for seven years. Lately, my motivation has tended to peter out after only a few days. This time, as I go into my 4th week of self-isolating, I’m going to be super optimistic and create 2 writing projects.

First, I’ll be writing the standard 50,000 words of a middle grade urban fantasy draft I’ve kept close to my heart for years and want to stop procrastinating on.

Second, and perhaps more significant, is my “StayHomeRhymeMo” project. Every day I’ll write and post a poem about COVID-19 and its effects on our daily lives. I know I can’t speak for everyone and our experiences are all so different, but maybe you can relate. Humor and hope are especially important now.

I’m realizing how grateful I am for technology and its ability to connect us when we’re apart. People say the best thing you can do to help is to stay home, but what can I do within these four walls? This is a way for us to spread compassion and grow closer. Yes, my daily posts will help me stay accountable in my own writing goals, but my hope is that they’ll spread some smiles too.

 

NaNo Is Complete…Or Is It?

Congratulations to everyone who participated in National Novel Writing Month in November! Whether you made your word goal or not, you took part in a fabulous endeavor you should be proud of.

If the NaNo hype still lives inside you, and you want to know what to do with your novel now that NaNo is over, you’re in luck! I’ve been working for a while on a mini-guide to the basics of the editing/publishing process for a NaNo novel. So please check it out below and let me know what you think!

Stuff Your Novel in a Drawer: A Mini-guide to the Life of Your Novel After NaNoWriMo

NaNo Week 3: Do Something Fun!

This week, I challenge you to do something fun with your novel. “What?” you ask. “Writing’s not fun?”

Not all the time. At least not for me, and I’m pretty sure I’m not the only writer who feels that way.

I’ve found that every once in a while, you just need to do something extra with the world you’ve created for your story. Maybe you’ve built up a fantasy world. Now’s the time to get out of that chair and create a popular game that the kids there play at recess. Or maybe your story is about an alien colony on Mars. Draft up their world’s equivalent of a Constitution. Anything fun that isn’t necessarily writing your story. Because hey, you’re still discovering things about your story, and anything to keep your mind on your story throughout the day is good! Who knows what else you might come up with just because you’re thinking about your story instead of the Saturday morning cartoons.

My brother is great with computers, so we scripted a video game based on my book. (Hasn’t happened yet, but hey, it gave me some great ideas!) He also helped me make (okay, it was mostly him) an online puzzle for the cover of my first book, Dreamweaver. So even if you’re not writing a fantasy, you could do something like that. Now I can just move my mouse around on the screen and stare at main character Audrey’s face being formed and call it writing.

Whatever it takes to keep going in NaNoWriMo! Sometimes even these idle moments of play can give you an idea that changes your whole story.

And if you’re behind in NaNo, don’t stop! Let’s see what we can show for this at the end of the month.