It is Camp NaNoWriMo prep week again. I can hardly believe it’s almost July. Since the end of camp in April, I have been working on how I want to turn Cornelia Street into two books. That has been a process that is harder than I thought, figuring out how to craft the rollercoaster ride that the characters are on. It really means that not many words have been added to the manuscript, but that’s fine. I would like to end the year with one or two first drafts. However, I am trying to embrace this process. Look at all those check marks! I had a pretty successful day today.

So, I am doing a very untraditional Camp this year. I am going to try to hold myself to the goal of writing 2000 words a day. However, this will be spread between two different projects. I just feel like since I will be using the big November NaNoWriMo to write an actual first draft of one of these books, I need to have more options. So, I’m working on two projects this month.

The first is Tegan and Emerson’s Novel: Centennial Park. I hope to get about 30,000 words done on it, plus the plotting and other character work on the side character that needs to be done. I really need to focus on my external conflict in this book, and I’m hoping that free writing and giving my brain something else to work on will help.

The other project is born of my trip to NYC. As a city my younger self longed to be in, I have been really thinking about reflection points in people’s lives. You know those moments where it feels like there are two (or three) paths and you have to choose, closing off the others to you forever. What if you could see both paths? What if the reader got to see the best and worst of the protagonists? Taylor Jenkins Reid does this in Maybe Another Life, and while I liked that book, the story focuses on Hannah. In my book, Harder to Forget, I want to look at the couple at the center of this pivotal point. I feel like having dual protagonists and seeing how these two people in one timeline are the couple that everyone dreams they could be a part of, and in another they are crashing into each other’s lives one ill-fated encounter after another, hurting themselves and others in the process. I want to look at the ways that love makes and breaks us all.

So, tomorrow, for Day Two, I want to:

• Work on Olivia’s character profile
• Work on the Act 1 timeline 1 of Harder To Forget
• Work on Act 1 scene cards for Centennial Park
• Map out the settings for Timeline 1 of Harder to Forget

See You tomorrow! Are you doing Camp NaNoWriMo inJuly? tell me about your project in the comments!