Thursday, July 4, 2013

Camp NaNo Weekly Check-In

I'm going to limit these to one per week now, though sticking to that plan has proved difficult in the past. Unlike November's NaNo, Camp lets the user set the word goal, but I stuck with the typical 50,000. (Also unlike November, you get an extra day, so that's good.) Writing 1600+ words a day is doable (I split my time into two forty-minute sprints), but leaves little time for other writing, hence the sparseness of my blogging lately. Anyway, here's a short update:

Things that are working for me:

* Outlining, outlining, and outlining. I've fully embraced outlining -- can you tell? In all seriousness, outlining is crucial for longer pieces of fiction where it's easy to get a little lost in your story. Doesn't have to be a formal one either, just a list of key points to hit.

* Setting aside "writing time." As I mentioned, I can write 1600 words (which is much different from simply typing 1600 words) in about two hours. I split those two hours into two separate writing sessions: one in the morning, and one later in the evening.

* Some editing as I go. Yes, that's not entirely within the spirit of NaNo, but I hate writing slop for the sake of meeting the day's goal.

Things that aren't working:

* Character sketches/ character interviews (like the ones listed here ). I make them and never use them. Characters tend to reveal themselves as you go along.

* Writing "out of order." Tried this the last time and all I had was a big disjointed mess. Yeah, I wrote 50,000 words but most of it was gibberish. I know some writers do this and are successful; I'm not one of them.

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