Camp Nanowrimo feels way too close, but it is definitely coming up on us and will be here in a little over a week! I am really excited but also not entirely certain how everything is going to work out for me. I prepare but there always will be something that will end up catching me off guard. Today, I am going to talk about preparing playlists and other things to listen to throughout the month. For me personally, this is an incredibly valuable use of my time because I need to be able to have this stuff done and ready to go. How I Make Playlists I would like to say that I have everything clean and refined and perfectly suited for the mood of my book and honestly, I just can't do it. Do all of the songs on my playlists generally fit within an aesthetic? Yeah, sure. But honestly, that aesthetic typically changes and is refined as I continue to add songs. Currently, I've been listening to a lot of 90s and 00s Pop Rocks and while some of those songs do not exactly fit with...

I'm back with another post about Camp Nanowrimo, this one mostly on time! I just have to say that I am glad that Camp Nanowrimo isn't this much because I have had so much that is going on this month. I've been working on planning while trying to get ahead on other stuff to have more time for writing in April. Planning, Plantsing, and Pantsing Before planning, you first have to decide how much you want to plan, if even at all. Some people will have nothing prepared for April. Others will have enough paper to write a dissertation on their future novel that they will be writing. There is no wrong way to do it. This is all about what is best for your personal preferences. I have prepared stuff in a variety of ways, but through trial and error, I have found I really need to have some stuff that is written down, especially in terms of names and knowing in general what has to happen next. I'm happy with what I've been doing so far so I'm going to share my proces...

I was going to post this over the weekend but life got in the way and I didn't have it finished. But here it is now! Better late than never. You can check out my introduction post here . How to Make Your Goal Camp Nanowrimo is a lot more flexible than Nanowrimo. In the November challenge, your set goal is 50,000 words. Sure, some people have individual goals, especially the overachievers (in the Beyond 50k forum ) but this is what is officially winning. In Camp, your goal can be set in words, hours, minutes, lines, and pages. This leads to a variety of projects and stages within those projects. Writing a screenplay? A goal in lines might be ideal. Planning and editing are good to measure in time, but some people may use pages. Everything is literally up to you. I'm focusing primarily on the first draft, but I love how you can measure in anything. I stick with words because timing things annoys me and words Is a more concrete way to measure. I definitely see the pros of u...

Hi everyone! This begins the first in my new blogging series concerning Camp Nanowrimo in April and starting a new first draft. I am already super excited with my own plans of what I'm writing and I hope that you will join in on all the fun. In case you've never heard of Nanowrimo before, it stands for National Novel Writing Month and occurs in November of every year, where writers around the world attempt t o write 50,000 words in only 30 days. You can check out more about Nanowrimo here . It's not November now, but Camp Nanowrimo runs every April and July, where you set your own writing related project goal and use the month as an opportunity to get stuff done. You can check out the Camp Nano website here . Camp Nano especially is not just about starting a new draft; it is about getting writing-related work done, whether that be writing, revising, editing, or anything else. It is all up to you. I found out about Nanowrimo in 2013 and participated in Camp Nanowrimo ...

As some of you may know, I am currently a college student. I did a decent job updating this blog in January. Not so good in February so far, but there is always time to improve that situation. I am also working two part time jobs on campus. Full disclosure, working two part time jobs at college sucks and I would not recommend. I also am actively involved in two clubs and heading to DC with one of them in March. So, it's safe to say I am a busy person who overcommits to everything (as I cough glaring at how many books I've requested on Netgalley). This is just who I am and I have come to terms with it, for the most part anyway. This semester, despite the massive workload, I have done a better job managing my time than I think I ever have, including Nanowrimo. My general Nano time management is just to write until I have something due in a few hours and then scream as I work on that. Definitely not good. But this semester has been going fairly well, and I am here to share som...

Happy New Year!🎈Welcome to 2019!🎈 Last year I started this blog and as I'm sure you could tell if you started reading then, I had absolutely no idea what I was doing. Then I went off to college and had no idea how to adapt from high school life, which definitely did not help things. But hopefully this year, I am ready to go and I will be way more consistent than last year. This leads me to my New Years resolutions and goals. Some of them are for this blog, some for writing, and some are closer to my personal life. However, I thought that I'd share them anyway, in hopes that this will help in my motivation to actually get them done. I don't know if it was just my school, but I had to learn how to make SMART goals too many times to count. In case you have never heard of SMART goals before, this stands for goals that are specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time bound. However, I am awful at following instructions, so while I used some of these ideas whi...

I have had a heck of a hard time trying to work on any of my writing projects in the past few months.. Especially with my initial goal at the beginning of this year, sometimes it is hard to take the small victories.  I wanted to write 40k every month in 2018. I quit writing mid January and didn't pick it back up again until Camp NaNoWriMo in April, where I managed to write almost 15k before I quit again. And I want to make excuses, but at some point, who am I even making them to? I know what happened. I know that school got busy, or that my mom had surgery, or that AP exams started or everything else that happened that I did not write during. I know all of that. So then why do I feel the need to excuse my writing behavior? So, today is the day I am not going to make anymore excuses for my not writing. If it is something that I enjoy, then of course I should try to make time to write. And I want writing to be an important part of my life. The next day that you are behind, or d...