Tag Archives: Camp Nano

How Are We All Holding Up?

Posted on by
1

Hello folks! I hope you are all doing well. How is the quarantine treating you? I’m on day 44 of “self-isolation” – well, sort of anyway. I did have to go into work a few days this week and will again next week, but other than that I haven’t gone anywhere else and most things are still shut down (so no bookstores or movie theatres or window-shopping in Midtown…)

Are you all handling things ok? Are you finding things to keep you occupied? Did you have some kind of income to keep you afloat, or did you lose your job because of the pandemic? It’s all very scary right now and we are all under a lot of stress. Some people are using this time to “better themselves” and others are taking care of their families and still others are just fighting to keep it together. Whatever you are doing, it is ALL GOOD. You are doing the best you can and that’s all anyone should expect of themselves or others in a time like this.

Don’t be too hard on yourself. This is something I have to remind myself as well as anyone else. I have had some really rough days, and some days that have been perfectly fine. That’s totally natural but sometimes we cannot help but feel like we’re not doing enough – even though we know logically that that’s totally silly.

I thought I would share a few things that I’ve been keeping busy with, and if you’d like to share what you’ve been up to, that would be great!

I am still participating in Camp Nanowrimo for the month of April, and doing surprisingly well. I mean, I’m not going to be writing 50k words like some people – I gave myself a SMALLER goal, just 20k words this time. But I have managed to keep up a daily writing streak ALL MONTH, which is the best I’ve done in YEARS, and I have written a little over 16k words so far, which is more than I have written (again) in YEARS. I am very happy about that. While I am in no way minimizing or trivializing the difficulties, tragedies, and death toll of this pandemic, I am trying to be grateful for the small things, and one of those things has been the luxury of free time I haven’t had in quite awhile.

I have also been reading a lot still. Not quite as much as I did the first couple weeks, but still. I finished Artemis Fowl: The Atlantis Complex (book #7 of the series) last night (technically at 2:30am this morning). Unfortunately, because I am borrowing those audiobooks from the library, I now have to wait for the final book of the series to become available and the wait is KILLING ME. In the meantime, I have started the audiobook of The Wee Free Men (one of the Discworld books) by Terry Pratchett. This book will satisfy one of the categories in my “Storm the Castle” 2020 Reading Challenge (which much of my reading these days has not done). I am also slowly working through the nonfiction book The Queens of Animation by Nathalia Holt.

Speaking of my reading challenge, I have now completed 9 out of the 21 books on my challenge. When I finish the two books I’m currently reading, that will put me at 11 and I’ll be halfway through! In addition, when I finish the 8th Artemis Fowl book I will have officially finished the first series in the 2020 Finishing the Series Reading Challenge. And then I’ll move on to the next series (perhaps The Dresden Files, though that I might be TOO ambitious…)

I have also bought a computer game for the first time in, oh… 12 or 13 years… I bought the video game Gris when Steam was having a sale last week. I’ve never been a big gamer, but I did play a couple computer games back in the day and I thought it would be fun to pick it up again. I’m only 3 “chapters” into Gris so far, but I absolutely love it. It’s quiet and calming and the art (which was the main selling point for me, I admit) is absolutely GORGEOUS. I highly recommend it.

In addition, I am doing more cross-stitch work. I’m almost done with this robot design I got from the Etsy shop DianaWattersHandmade. She has great designs for reasonable prices, she ships quickly, and she’s really friendly as well!

Anyway, those are some of the things (besides work and house-cleaning) I’ve been doing to keep busy and calm. How about you guys? Found anything fun? Read anything good lately? Please do share! I’d love to hear about it!

Camp NaNo April 2020

Posted on by
Reply

This is my public announcement that I am participating in the April Camp NaNoWriMo event this year.

Can I assume that everyone knows what NaNoWriMo is? Is that a safe assumption? Probably, but just in case: NaNoWriMo stands for National Novel Writing Month. It is a nonprofit event and website that started… oh gosh… a long time ago, to encourage amateur writers (and everyone really) to put aside excuses, fear, hesitations, etc. and just sit down to write the first draft of a novel over the course of a single month. The official NaNoWriMo event takes place in November, and the goal is to write 50,000 words between Nov 1st and 31st (50,000 words being chosen ages ago, slightly at random, as the average length of a novel).

However, because some people simply cannot participate in November for any number of reasons – as a former professor, I can state that it is particularly difficult for teachers to participate in November – and because other people simply wanted more opportunities to write under the gamified conditions and community-building structure of the NaNoWriMo website, the organizers created two “Camp Nano” events: one in April and one in July.

Camp Nano is a little lower stakes than the official November event. The goal is not to write a novel, or 50,000. Instead you are given the opportunity to create your own writing goal: choose your own word-count goal, make an editing goal, work on short stories or whatever else you want. And you create writing groups (they used to be called “cabins” but that appears to be gone from their new revamped website now) to work with friends or any people you meet on the website.

I have participated in the official November event 4 times and have only “won” (ie, finished at least 50,000 words) ONCE. I have also participated in Camp Nano a couple times. But its been awhile.

I hadn’t initially planned on participating this year, but a friend of mine invited me to work in a cabin with her, and I figured “why not?” So I made a very last minute decision and just updated my profile on the Nano website yesterday – just in time to start officially writing tomorrow.

I have made a smaller goal for myself – just 20,000 words instead of 50,000 – and I will be working on a fanfiction piece instead of an original work. It has been a very very VERY long time since I have been able to write anything productively or coherently, and I am hoping that allowing myself to work on fanfiction, with a predetermined world and characters, will help shake my brain loose again so I might eventually move back into original work.

*fingers crossed*

I’d love to hear from others who are participating in Camp Nano this month! Or who have participated in any of the Nano events in the past! Why did you work on? How did you fare? Have you ever “won” in November? Do you win every year (my best friend often does and I am jealous of her…)? Sound off in the comments!