11

So, I'm doing Camp NaNoWriMo again this year.  I have eleven days to refine my idea.  Due to factors like having more things do to in July than write a novel and not wanting to be a crabby hermit, I'll only be writing a 20,000 word novella.  Well, at press time, that's the plan.

I figured blogging would be a good way to get my writing muscles back into shape until then.  Despite resolving like I do every year to write more, I've yet to write anything this year besides book reviews, and I've written far fewer of those than I normally do.

Since I'll have fewer large blocks of writing time, this next book is probably going to be a stitch job.  I have distinct ideas about the beginning and end and will probably write those first.  All the blurry bits in the middle will have to wait a bit.

Stasis is something I've had in my head for a month or two, since a friend of mine asked me what I thought about Paul Rudd playing an American version of Doctor Who.  Her suggestion re-kindled my interest in telling Doctor Who-style stories and gave me a new wrinkle for it.  I resisted the urge to dive right into the writing until I had some time to ponder the main character.

Even though I'm not writing an entire novel, I'm pretty excited about the impending Camp.

Butterflies

Butterflies

Snakes!

Snakes!

Year of the Chipmunk

Year of the Chipmunk

NaNoWriMo, Netgalley, and Not Having Enough Time to Read Everything I Want to Read

I pretty much bottomed out after my last post.  Still haven't gotten the car out of impound.  Still don't know who the killer is for sure.  One of my goals for the coming weekend is to at least get through that chapter.  Jack Whitlock must solve this case!

So I've been on Netgalley for over a year and it has eaten up way too much of my reading time.  Instead of reading things that sound good for free, I should focus on ones that I would actually pay to read.  I'm tired of most of the ARCs I read only being three star reads.

Camp NaNoWriMo progress report

I pushed past 60,000 words in my rewrite of Between Hell and a Hard Place yesterday.  Right now, I'm struggling with getting a car out of the police impound lot but I'm very pleased with the second draft so far.

I'm really glad I added Otis Reed and Nick Ambrose and took out the hacker character from the first draft.  The Parker family (the Brissette family in the first draft) is much more sordid.  I'm not sure that I'm not changing who the killer is at this point.  I only have five or six chapters of old material to edit/adapt but there are some new things I have to add.  The old draft was 75,000 words and I'm thinking this one is going to be around 80,0000.

I'm going to shoot for having this draft completed by Wednesday but we'll see.  The weather has been really nice lately so it's hard to stay inside.

Camp NaNoWriMo - Day 7

Camp did not start well.  I wrote 1000 words on the first day before deciding I hadn't done nearly enough prep for the story I had in my head.  I pulled the plug.  However...

... I dusted off Between Hell and a Hard Place and have been furiously editing it for the past few days.  I took out one supporting cast member, added another, and switched some locations around.  I've also got another suspect, which is going to make the story veer off into Parts Unknown fairly soon.  Oh, and I'm changing the vaguely Russian drug dealers into redneck meth dealers.  I'm flying high at 40k, which sounds like a lot but only 10k are actually new words.  Since I don't plan on claiming any prize goodies, I'm counting myself as a participant anyway.