Hey, campers! For those who missed it, I'm one of the insane participants in Camp NaNoWriMo, attempting to write a novel (or at least 50,000 words of one) in one month. Let's check my progress:
Earlier today, I hit 25,000 words. So the month is slightly more than half over (every hour counts when you're NaNoWriMo-ing) and I'm halfway to the goal--not too shabby!
A few people have asked me what my novel is about. The short answer is: I don't know. The long answer is: it's not really "about" anything yet. I have characters, scenes, dialogue, exposition, etc., but I don't have what anyone would call a plot. Carrie assures me that this is normal, and that a story can emerge from all this babbling. I just have to keep going.
And so I continue to plug away. If this were a real camp, I imagine this might be about the time I would start to get homesick. Some days it's hard to keep writing. Sometimes there are distractions, or things I would rather be doing (like sleeping instead of getting up early to work on this), or the words just aren't coming. And even when they do come, are they any good? We CampNaNoWriMo-ers can't be worried about that right now. This event is an exercise in quantity, not quality. We'll all make improvements later. But we can't improve upon something that doesn't exist, and that's what this camp is all about--making something that didn't exist before.
How about you? Tell me about a time you made something out of nothing.
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