Last night was pretty productive after I made the blog post. I put in a few hours of plotting and naming before bed, and now all my characters have names and the cities and neighborhoods they live in are laid out. I’m getting really close to finishing my prep.

Normally, I would spend a month on this process, but I decided to constrain myself to a week this time. It has been really productive, and I feel like I have over-plotted in the past, leaving little room for my characters to grow.

I want to touch on how I am approaching this draft. In the past, I have been pretty reserved and streamlined my scene list to only the most vital scenes. My thinking was that this would save me work in revision. However, I have received feedback that my characters seem stifled or self-censored. I think this comes from the lack of play I give myself while writing. I am very methodical in my approach, which has helped me finish manuscripts, but now that I know I can start and finish a book, I want it to be dynamic. I want to be surprised by where these characters take me.

This Camp NaNoWriMo will have a lot of first. It’s my first contemporary set book. I am writing while on a road trip for most of the month. I usually write in my office or a this coffee shop in my neighborhood. I am dreading this trip. I am going home again to help clean out my parents house. To make the burden of things they have to take care of less. The last trip home was fairly traumatic. I am looking at this as way to throw myself into something that feels familiar but new. Something to keep me excited for each day while I deal with some pretty miserable stuff.

I’ll see you all tomorrow, for our last day of prep week.

Here is what I am hoping to accomplish today.

1. Finish Nick’s Playlist.
2. Do half the scene cards
3. Start on Julian’s Playlist
4. Plan out what I need to put in my travel writing bag.
5. Get My EDC Travelers Notebook set up for April