Hello! This week – or last weeks – writing update is coming at you a little bit late, sorry about that. I have had a bit of an up and down, confusing week.
As the majority of you know, April is one of the months for Camp NaNoWriMo. I started this month with a project in mind to work on as part of Camp. You can read more about the details: here. In short though, it was a YA contemporary. However, I discussed last week about my struggles with motivating myself to write and I was just really having a hard time wanting to write this story.
In any project, it is important to want to write the story you are telling and to be at least inspired by it. That sounds like a little bit of a romanticisation of the term, because obviously every day, you are not going to be inspired by it and you aren’t going to want to write it. I didn’t feel inspired by it in the slightest though. I was forcing words out and I wasn’t reaching my wordcount goals and I just wasn’t liking anything I was writing.
As I have discussed previously, I am using Camp as a way to clear my mind whilst I take a break from my main project but keep me writing and motivated to write so I can return to my main project next month. With the way the month started, this just wasn’t going to happen.
Between Sunday 4th April – Friday 9th April, I wrote 3,307 words. I wrote on four of those days, with my highest word count of 1,000 words. That is still a good wordcount for the week, however, as I am fast drafting and had a lot of free time, I knew I could have done better – and I also wanted to do better. I finished on the 9th April with 5,140 words total and I didn’t like what I had written, nor did I like where anything was going.
All week, I had another fantasy project floating around in my head. Someone in the comments last week mentioned how I may be struggling going from a fantasy to a contemporary because it is such a change of pace, and that has also been lingering with me.
So on Saturday, I sat at my laptop, and thought I would just bullet point my ideas for this new fantasy project and instead, I ended up writing an opening scene and one thing led to another and I had 1,200+ words. I slept on it, and when I woke the next day, I was bursting with the inspiration and motivation that I had been craving. I had work that morning though (which is why I didn’t manage to get this post up yesterday) and my entire shift I was buzzing with excitement to get home and write.
With that, I officially abandoned my YA Contemporary and I am now working on a mermaid fantasy story. I think this was the best thing for me at this stage. Within three days, I already have 5,000 words and I have finally stopped thinking everyday about the things I want to add to my main project. I think this is the perfect thing for me right now. It is offering the best distraction and I am actually really happy with what I am writing and creating.
I am not a morning person, and I was so excited about writing this mermaid fantasy, that I woke up at 6:30 this morning to get started on writing as early as possible! As I am writing this up now, it is midday and I have already gotten in 2,500 words for the day. I am only taking a break so that I can get this post up and update you on my week!
These writing updates are really holding me accountable; to have something to talk about each week, I need to be writing. Not only this though, I am also finding out some of my weaknesses and strengths by exploring them in these types of posts. I hope I can continue to do them and learn more and more about myself and my writing journey with every post.
How did your writing go this week? And let me know your thoughts on swapping out projects!
Kira Jeanette 
Never did any of the NANO challenges. In terms of writing—-I used this piece of this advice I learned in high school “just write, don’t think about”. While writing my 1st novel, in the middle my characters started writing my novel and I let them.
Yes, on my 5th draft, but can’t continue until I get my dad’s edits back
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Good luck once you get your edits back with continuing with your story! Can you work on something else in the mean time?
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My dad did give me the challenge of creating a map for Tale of the Cattail Forest.
Am about halfway done with my 1st draft of Lizzy the Lizard. As far as Greatest Discovery—struggle with getting past the brainstorming stage
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That’s great! I hope you can push through the brainstorming stage
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It just it a hard story to develop. However, two of my characters I did really develop.
Aurora and Jasmine I really did create. Two fraternal twins born in 1998, whose parents were artsy and big fans of Disney. Hazel hair and light blue eyes- one girl with curly hair and the other straight.
Aurora- innocent, stubborn. More into princesses and dolls. Mali is the doll most important to her (named after Maleficent, but resembles the princess she is named after)
Jasmine- more mature, optimistic, fiercely protective of her sister. More into the crafts especially creating the outfits the dolls wear.
I actually know their parents died- car crash on a snowy day, and the twins had to witness it and Aurora is struggling a lot more with it.
They are the main characters of the series
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Those characters sound amazing! I can’t wait to eventually read the story they have!
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Set in NYC- about six orphans who eventually get put on a scavenger hunt T.V. show called The Greatest Discovery.
It took a while for me to figure out who the main character for the six girls were going to be, but eventually settled on Jasmine and Aurora
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Wishing you all the best in writing!
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Thank-you so much!
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Yay, a new writing update! Ahh, I thought this was going to be about you not doing Camp because you lost inspiration, but I’m glad to see that’s not the case and that you’re loving your new novel idea! I’m very happy for you! And your contemporary idea will still be there later if you want to return to it. 🙂
Since you switched projects, are you aiming for any particular word count or goals now, or are you just trying to write every day and get the words down?
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Thank-you so much for the love on the writing updates! I am definitely still inspired to write!
On the NaNo website, I couldn’t create another project that technically related to Camp NaNo which was a little frustrating, but so far I have the new project on the website set to reach 20,000 words by 30th April; however I am on day four of working on the project and nearing 10k already, so I think I am going to have to up the goal. I know some days I am going to have bigger word counts than others due to work, but I am really optimistic I can probably get 30k by the end of the month!
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I didn’t know the website prevented having more than one camp project. I figured the recent changes would have allowed that.
I have no doubt you can get 30k before the month ends! Almost 10k in 4 days is amazing!
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Yeah that was slightly annoying, but oh well! Thank-you so much!
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