Camp NaNo April Plans

Hello! Happy 1^st April and the start of Camp NaNo April! Camp NaNo April is a part of the NaNoWriMo challenge. NaNoWriMo is National Novel Writing Month which takes place in November and the challenge is to write 50,000 words in the month. Camp NaNo is a side challenge that takes place in April and July; however you get to choose your own goal for the month.

For Camp NaNo April, I have set myself a goal of 25,000 words. It is less intense than NaNoWriMo, but it is still enough of a large enough goal that I will be able to challenge myself to achieve it.

I discussed this a little in my last writing update, but in the UK, non-essential shops are set to open on 12^th April. I work in non-essential retail, so it is likely I will be returning to work around that date. That alone will make Camp NaNo challenging, but it will also mean that I can use Camp NaNo as a way to sort out a writing and working balanced routine.

When the lockdown restrictions were announced in the UK, I gave 12^th April as my deadline for my current project which is a YA fantasy. This was before I knew that I was for certain going to take part in Camp NaNo April. With this personal deadline, I am unlikely to get started on my Camp NaNo project until after the 12^th. So, what I thought was going to be a lighter daily word count is probably just going to double for the second half of the month. It will be an interesting experiment to see how I juggle the two projects and with working again.

My YA fantasy novel, which is a Rapunzel retelling, is almost finished and I am hoping I will finish it before 12^th April, so that I can get stuck in on my Camp project which is a YA contemporary novel. For me, my Camp project is just a little side project to work on, so that I can still keep up with my writing whilst also taking a break from the fantasy project.

My long-term plan for the year at the moment is to work on a contemporary project in April, then return to the fantasy novel in May or June and rewrite the entire thing and finish it in time to start a new project in November for NaNoWriMo, then in December go back to the Rapunzel retelling and prepare it for beta readers in the new year. I don’t know how well this is going to go, but I think it is a good place for me to start and keep focused on the bigger picture.

I am finally feeling excited about my writing again and it feels great having a long-term plan (as basic as it is) and also a plan to take it month by month. I am lenient and nothing is set in stone – especially as this has already changed from the start of the year. In January, I had a post that talked about my writing resolutions for 2021. In that post, I said that I wanted to outline a retelling and reach 80,000 on a WIP by the end of the year. In three months, I have already written 75,000 words towards a single project. I am already feeling so great about meeting these goals, and I am excited to see what else I can achieve this year.

For now, let’s focus on Camp NaNo April and getting this side project started. Let me know if you are taking part in Camp NaNo April and what goal have you set yourself?

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