April is almost here and I have two goals for next month. The first goal, which happens next weekend, is to finish my first Marathon. I’m so excited. The second, is to finish the 2nd draft of my novel Steel Warrior.
As we close out April, it is time to submit my official word count for Camp. Yep, I hit my final count and can enter the winner’s circle, but it’s bitter sweet. Although I penned some more scenes for my novel, Steel Strong, it wasn’t as much as I’d planned. In fact, I’d already lowered my goal to 25,000 as I knew it would be a tough month with all the activities I'm doing.
As the rain falls on the last Sunday in March, I know that my website design will soon be put aside for a bit. It has been fun, yet other activities are looming. With spring comes Camp NaNoWriMo and I look forward to writing. That doesn’t mean I’m planning to drop everything, but I do want to finish the story I started last year.
Well, just past a week and I’m over a quarter of the way into the second half of my novel. I’m not sure this is the best way to write a book, but so far Camp NaNoWriMo has been a perfect excuse to scratch a long time itch. I’m no longer just reading about writing or scratching out silly blog entries, but putting thousands of words into Scrivener that I hope one day to publish for all to ridicule. Okay, I’m hoping the ridicule part isn’t true, but I do want to get this book to a state that I can publish and hopefully entertain someone other than myself.
Let me be honest. I had no clue what I was doing when I started May’s Camp NaNoWriMo. Sure, I knew I wanted to write a novel and had a general idea of what the story would be about. I had a rough outline of the plot and some guiding themes I wanted to encompass. Since I was writing a sci-fi novel, I wanted the world to feel real yet fantastic so I created a list of what I thought was possible and what I wanted to stay away from. But I really didn’t understand how to structure a novel. In many ways, I still don’t.