April Writing Wrap-Up and May Outlook

How was April?

Well, after the suckiness of March, I couldn’t have really asked for a better month.

I started off thinking I would try out a new WIP for Camp NaNoWriMo. I had been listening to the audio book of Claudia Gray’s One Thousand Pieces of You, a substantial portion of which is dedicated to one of those forbidden romances between a princess and her guard. I got really invested in it. I nutted out a vague outline for a similar forbidden romance of my own. I set my Camp NaNo goal for 15000 words and away I went.

Two days and about 1800 words later, I’d honestly written the most important scenes (a first forbidden kiss and some aftermath) and I’d got that story out of my system, at least for now. What I wanted to do was get back into Facing the Music.

Taking just a few days’ break was what it took for me to really throw myself back into Facing the Music with renewed vigour. I upped my goal to 25k and hit that goal two days early (today!).

I also discovered something that had been holding me back. Some niggle in my mind said that I had to account for every second of every day for Ria, my main character. Once I realised this was weighing me down, and persuaded myself that there’s nothing wrong with saying “A week passed” or “the next month”, something shifted and the story started moving again.

I’m still a way from the end, but I feel like the end is in sight. Way out on the horizon. But you can see it if you look with a telescope. From the crow’s nest. It’s a nice feeling to not be meandering around a plot and hoping something will come of it. It’s been a long time since I haven’t felt meandering.

So what’s next?

Honestly, while I’m feeling this motivated, I’m just going to keep smashing out the words. I know earlier in the year I had those plans of writing during the week and then revising those words on the weekend, but that’s sort of dried up. I have the spot marked in Scrivener where I got up to with revisions, and I have written 30k since then!

The main NaNoWriMo site now has a goal setting function where you can set your own project and track the word count for up to three months. I’ve set myself a goal of 40k by the end of June, which I would hope will be bring me pretty close to the end of the first draft. And if I don’t finish it then, then I definitely hope I will by the time we leave for America at the end of July.

Even though I am not officially revising, I am still making notes as I go when I do identify something that needs fixing or looking into. For example, finding out the nineteenth century equivalent of house lights in a theatre. It wasn’t worth looking into in the middle of a writing session, but it probably will affect how Ria performs her act when the circus is temporarily relocated from their big top to a theatre.

I also need to go through the MS and make a list of all the characters and place names. I’m losing track of who’s who and there are so many times when I’ve just written [acrobat] or [new city], rather than go and find a name. Maybe I’ll leave that until the draft is finished, though, when that’s looking to be fairly soon.

So that’s my month. How have you all been trucking along? Did you do Camp NaNo? How did you fare? Or are you working on another aspect of the writing process?

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