Monthly Archives: June 2017

To Camp!

23 Friday Jun 2017

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I’m going camping in July!

Well. Not camping in the traditional sense. At least, not until August – at which points there will be tents and bugs, and a lot of sun.

No, July’s camping is much more virtual. I’m going to be participating in Camp NaNoWriMo. 30 days of cabinmates, forums of other writers, and me finishing this work in progress I have been wanting to finish.

A friend of mine suggested that we both participate. Me, so I can finish my current WIP, and her so she can finally really dig into a book that’s been floating around her head for like two years now.

Now, some of you are probably going, ‘what’s NaNoWriMo?’ and others, who may know about the main NaNoWriMo may be going ‘Camp NaNoWriMo? Did you make this up?’

First and foremost, NaNoWriMo stands for National Novel Writing Month. It was started way back when, and it’s when a bunch of us (thousands of us) writers get together for the month of November with the solid idea of writing 50,000 words in a month – ideally it’s towards a novel but some use it to rewrite novels, or do a compilation of short stores, etc. You can find more information at their website: nanowrimo.org

Camp NaNoWriMo is run by the same people who run the original NaNoWriMo. They created Camp NaNoWriMo because they had enough people going ‘but guys, I have finals in November, and we have this whole Thanksgiving Holiday because I live in the states where I have to be social with family! I can’t hole up for a month to write!’ And such, Camp NaNoWriMo was born. Camp is held twice a year, in April and in July. Unlike NaNoWriMo the Original, you can set your own word count for the month. Which makes it the perfect session to finish an already started project, verses trying to write one from start to finish.

And instead of regions that you’re broken into when participating in NaNoWriMo, Camp splits you into cabins of people and there’s a community discussion area where you can chit chat and encourage each other while the month gets going.

Find Camp NaNoWriMo at their website: campnanowrimo.org

Over all, it should be fun. And by the end of it, I should be able to go ‘It’s Finished!’. At least, that’s the plan!

Are you planning to participate in Camp NaNoWriMo? Let me know down in the comments below!

New Writing Prompts on the Horizon

15 Thursday Jun 2017

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So, I was at the bookstore the other day with my best friend and I happened upon this book just sitting on a shelf staring at me. I get distracted by shiny, and I don’t mean shiny like pretty but shiny like actual shiny. The writing on this book was all shiny reflective gold and I kind of loved it. The title of the book also caught me, no lie.

Write the Story – yes, the image that probably dragged you in here to read my blog post.

It’s this mostly empty book, with a prompt and ten items that you should be including in your writing when filling the prompt.

I’m excited to try to use this to help me better at writing. Because these can be used just for exercises to get me a little more back in the writing spirit. I think it will be fun to see what crazy interesting things will come from these prompts.

Maybe I’ll even share them here. Or at least pieces of them. We’ll see.

I’m hoping to start working on doing these prompts maybe once a week in July. I know they’re not really meant to be all that long, the book only gives you a page each prompt, but I never know how long my short prompts are going to be until I’m writing it and it’s coming to a close. After all, my current WIP was originally planned for 30,000 and it’s going on 50,000 words. We shall see.

What do you use to inspire you? Let me know in the comments below.

Gettin’ Hot in Here

06 Tuesday Jun 2017

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 So, my weekends plans had me out and about this past weekend. I drove down to St. Louis, MO and had a wonderful time out in Tower Grove Park. If you live in the area and never been, I suggest it. If you’re visiting St. Louis and want a nice place to eat lunch all picnic in the park, I suggest it for that too. The park is absolutely beautiful.

Though, even more so when it’s packed for several blocks with vendors selling books, clothes, hand made soaps, jewelry, and the like. And even better when some of those vendors sell these amazing Kebabs and frozen lemonade.

I didn’t come home with a lot of items, except for a tarot reading and dream pouch from a beautiful and amazing woman, everything I bought was food. And only one of those food items came home with me. Normally I’m all over getting the cute things to hang in windows, or a book from one of the local authors that sells their books there. But this year I was really trying to scale back. I’m trying to take cleaning my house seriously, and for better or worse that includes not bringing stuff home from a big show like this.

The frozen lemonade though. Kept me running. This whole weekend was 100+ degrees. Thankfully a tree was kind enough to share it’s branches with me and keep me shaded for most of the day. What sun I received, that made me look like an angry lobster on Sunday, has already faded into a tan color. Being very pale (ancestors were Swedish, German, Polish, and Irish) it’s super weird to have a little color on me right now.

Between the heat and the activities, and the driving, I wasn’t able to write at all while I was away. And yesterday was writing fail. I came back from a four day weekend to find that basically everything was going wrong and the office I work for was sinking without me. Great for job security, not so great for being able to get a little writing in before hours, during lunch, and after hours. Coupled with my new mattress arriving, I was basically zonked out after I was able to lug it up to my room and get it all unwrapped and then sheet-ed. I’m hoping for a little more success with getting words on a page tonight after I get home. And while for you, my lovely readers, this counts as words on a page, I’m not counting it towards words on a page myself because it’s not words towards my WIP. So time to buckle down when I get home.

Granted, a lot of times I like to use my laptop and write from bed. The last couple months have been a little more difficult doing that because my mattress was uncomfortable and crap, so this new mattress should lead to more writing at night before I crash too. Here’s hoping anyway.

Until next time, let me know how your weekend went. Did you get a lot done? Did you relax due to the high heats? Leave me a comment below!

Updates and Cleaning

01 Thursday Jun 2017

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So, with family obligations – birthday party things Memorial Day weekend – I wasn’t able to get a lot of writing done before the end of the month. Which means that WIP isn’t all that finished. I was able to get a few words done on it though. Slowly. Very slowly. Though, sadly, I’m not going to be able to get too much writing done this weekend either.

I have a Picnic in the Park event that I’m headed down to tomorrow, one state over from me so tomorrow is travel day.

While I won’t get much, if any writing done though, it will still be a beautiful time. There are some workshops I’m looking to attend at the event, and I get to see a friend I haven’t seen in like a year. So pretty excited about that too.

And who knows. Maybe I’ll be able to find some more inspiration for new stories. Though, I’m not sure I need TOO much more inspiration, before I finish projects.

Which brings me to the cleaning part of this. I’ve been trying to clean up some. Spring cleaning and what not in the house. And I ended up finding three different starts to stories.

Three.

I’m adding them to my idea binder so that I can hopefully work on them later. All in told I think I have like five or six starts to stories sitting and waiting for me to finish, and a myriad more in a journal that are currently merely concepts that need to be seriously flushed out. Soon, my pretties, soon.

And if you’re wondering where I get the flower pictures I put in my blog posts, I take them. I dabble in photography, and flowers are my favorite subject. Most tend to be taken in my own garden, or the gardens of friends and family.

Cheers everyone. I hope your first weekend in June is bright, beautiful, and full of inspiration!