Sunday, July 31, 2011

Camp NaNoWriMo

The August session of Camp NaNoWriMo begins tomorrow. Elise and I are going for it. We were discussing tactics, and we think we're going to attempt a tougher daily quota than last time: instead of writing 1667 words per day combined, we're going to be writing 1667 words each. It may not sound impressive to you, but it most certainly is for us. And if we succeed, we'll end up with 100,000 words or more by the end of the month (instead of 50,000 - the NaNo goal).

In other words, if we succeed, we cold have a first draft of our first book before the end of this year! Woot woot!

I think that's a pretty ossum goal.

We're trying to get a little bit of a head start (NO, IT IS NOT CHEATING!), so we wrote part of a scene last night, and will hopefully work on it some more tonight. So far, we have just over 600 words. (Pitiful, I know. But we're working.)

Hopefully we can get our asses in gear by tomorrow.

I am both exhilarated and terrified by this challenge.

One thing we've decided is that we need to worry less and go with the flow more. Plot holes are okay in the first draft! Not every word needs to be perfection! We don't need to plan every breath our characters take, because we'll plan ourselves into corners. And frankly, I think all of the planning we've been doing has been taking some of the fun out of the actual writing, because we're worrying so darn much about being cohesive and whatnot.

Hopefully, in time, our villains will reveal themselves to us. We're having trouble figuring them out right now - what they really want and how they intend to get it. What's the final conflict/climax going to be? How do we move the story there? Will it flow naturally, or will we write in circles, like we did with parts of Two Captains? (Oh my giddy goodness, I hope not.)

Will we succeed this month? Only time will tell...

*sigh*

Writing is hard. Especially writing more better.

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