ALYSSA LOST IN SPACE

June just flew by, and I feel way more unprepared going into this NaNoWriMo session than I’d like (which is historically not great for me), but I’ve been busy with other stuff and I’m just itching to get back to writing. So I’m just going to dive in and see what I can get done!

What I’m Working On

I know I want to work on something new, but that’s about as far as I’ve got. And yes, it is the first of the month and I’m wasting precious writing time by trying to plot on the fly, but I’m a fast writer when I put my mind to it.

Right now I’m stuck between two ideas – a high fantasy and an urban fantasy, and I’m leaning towards the urban fantasy because that will be so much easier to plot. I have plans to write some longstanding series and I wanted to flesh out the worlds beforehand so I have a better understanding of how it works, and the sorts of stories I can tell within it.

As of this post, I’m still undecided on which project to work on, so for the moment, I’m working on both of those, and trying to come up with an overall premise to work as my touchstone when I begin outlining. After that, I hope to outline the project I choose and fast draft the rest of it in July.

My Goals for Camp NaNoWriMo

1. Win Camp NaNoWriMo with 50 thousand words

The beauty of Camp NaNoWriMo is that you can participate in the fun of NaNo without the same word-count burden, because 50 thousand words is a lot of words and it’s not easy to write that much in a single month unless you happen to be a prolific drafter. But I feel like I’ve really fallen behind on my writing goals, and I know I can write 50k in a month. I’ve done it several times before. So I want to challenge myself and get writing again.

2. Finish a first draft

This is a big one. It has been almost a year and a half since I last finished the first draft of a novel, and I didn’t expect self-isolation to affect me as much as it did. I’m falling behind, as I mentioned, and I need to get back on track. I’m a fast drafter as long as I have a competent outline. I want to be a published author, so it’s time I got used to working within deadlines. Once my outline is ready, I plan on setting my goal to chapters rather than a number of words.

3. Outline another project

I did mention I’m stuck between two ideas at the moment, right? Well, that’s where this goal comes in. Whichever one I don’t choose I still want to flesh out an outline so I can start drafting that project in August. Of course, I’ll be doing that after I do my writing for the day.

How Am I Going to Reach Those Goals?

Well, writing every day is just not going to be possible, so I can rule that out right away. I have the first two days for figuring out what I’m writing and cobbling together a loose outline that can hopefully get me through an initial chapter. Then I’ll probably spend a couple days working on a proper outline and detailing the rest of the chapters. Then I’ll be writing a chapter per day until it’s done! My chapters average around 2.5 to 3k, and regardless of which idea I choose, I don’t see either of them being a particularly long draft, maybe 50-60k words at most. So we’re looking at about 20 chapters or less, which means I need 20 solid writing days between now and the end of the month.

I’ll be tuning in to as many livestreams on Youtube as I can because writing and outlining with others really helps to get that butt in the chair and putting words on the page. As per my Summer Bingo Goals, I might try a 10k day sometime this month, maybe even with some other writers because those tend to be pretty popular during NaNoWriMo!

Let’s Write Together!

I’d really like go into this camp with some writing accountability buddies and set up a writing group on the NaNo website! If you’re participating in NaNoWriMo and you don’t have a group yet, let me know in the comments if you’re interested in starting one with me! My username over there is alyssaflynn if you want to be writing buddies!

And now that the NaNoWriMo website has gone through some changes, you can use it to track writing projects that aren’t tied to NaNoWriMo or those daily word counts. It’s pretty cool and you should definitely check it out!

Are you participating in Camp NaNoWriMo? What will you be writing this month? What goal did you set for yourself? Let me know in the comments below!