Nano Log: This Month's Challenge

Once I’d written my first novel, I was hooked. The crazy roller coaster of emotions connected to the project was dizzying, but I’d never been as proud of myself as I was when I looked at my full wordcount meter days before the deadline. For the past several years, I’ve participated in National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo or just Nano) and have written a few novels in a month each.

I’ve been writing ever since I learned to read, but attempting my first full-length book opened up an entirely new world to me. Participating in Nano each November and in Camp Nano, a spin-off event that takes place in April and July, has taught me a lot about how to put a story together. The editing work I’ve done since then has taught me how to nicely polish a story once it’s been put together.

Nano and Camp Nano helped me to create new characters and worlds, to discover new things about my own writing style and habits, and to become a part of an incredibly supportive and creative online community of writers. Through NaNoWriMo, I’ve improved my writing, increased my confidence, and connected with fantastic writers.

And that’s why I’m going to experiment a little. I’m going to try something this month that I’ve never tried before. I’m going to write, instead of a book, a short story collection.

I look forward to challenging myself this month. My fastest writing sprints have taught me that I’m capable of writing 1,000 to 1,500 words per half-hour, and I’ll be pushing myself to get into that range with each writing session. My goal is (1) to write 30,000 words by the end of the month and (2) to have clear outlines for my main plot and subplots and a strong understanding of how they all tie together.

To help me reach these goals, I’ve allotted 1-hour blocks of time each day to dedicate solely to working on my camp project. In addition to drafting, I also like to take time after I’ve worked on increasing my wordcount to put together notes for my next writing session. If I have a few scenes outlined (whether it’s with an actual outline or just a few sentences detailing what I want to happen) it’s a lot easier to get started the next time I write.

When I have time, I also like to get around to non-writing activities that affect my writing, like interacting with other writers, reading camp care packages (mini-peptalks full of writing advice), or participating in events like virtual write-ins.

I also plan to create and publish a blog post each week for the duration of the month, rather than the one per month I usually post. I’ll just put aside a little time a few days a week to work on blog posts. Hopefully, that’ll be enough to get me a post for each week of Camp Nano, because posting on my blog is one way that I stay connected with my community and chronicle my journey.

The tools that I’m using to follow my strategy and achieve this month’s goals are Scrivener, a couple kinds of writing exercises, and interaction with the Nano community.

My exercises include a poetry book and these part-of-speech prompts that I put together specifically to use this month.

I bought the book of poetry writing warm-ups at a thrift store about a year ago, and it’s been pretty helpful to me in getting my creativity flowing when I don’t know what to write about. I pick and choose which ones I want to do and then give myself five to ten minutes for each exercise.

I also have the part-of-speech exercise I put together. I wrote, on color-coordinated paper, 30 each of random nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs, tossed them into a little box, and mixed them up. Each day I’ll draw one paper of each color and incorporate each into at least one scene that I write that day.

Yesterday’s combination (stained patio learning hesitantly) didn’t seem to make much sense when I first read it aloud. But it actually inspired a completely unplanned scene that taught me more about my characters!

I’m looking forward to tackling this challenge during April. With a solid plan and the tools to fall back on, I know that I can reach my goal.

What are your writing goals for this month, whether or not you’re participating in Camp Nano? How do you plan to reach your goals and what tools have you prepared to get you there?