Here’s the target: 1,700 words.
Every day.
For 31 days.
(To start, anyway.)
This daily word count rhythm might seem familiar to writers who have given National Novel Writing Month (aka, NaNoWriMo) a go. I have a couple of times over the last few years, most of them a failure (the “winning” year, 2009, resulted in a strange rambling manuscript that now lies in a box in the closet and in a lost folder on my hard drive).
Well, today marks the start of what is known as Camp NaNoWriMo. In essence, it’s the same as NaNoWriMo, yet donning a summer theme (hence the name). The idea behind both efforts is to build habit, routine, consistency, around any particular writing project.
I’m not using this effort to work on a novel. Instead I’m focusing on writing several short stories (four to five by month’s end is the expected outcome). I have several novels in play and on the shelf, but I’m coming back to fiction writing after many stalls and stops, and I want to have my chops down before really attempting the full novel route, so I’m using this effort to write a series of short stories. Writing, to me, is almost parallel to running. Both are incredibly similar in nature. Both require persistence. Both are, at their cores, solo activities (though you can do both in groups; I don’t, at least not at the moment). Both require training and trial-and-error. The key to both is consistency, routine, and developing a rhythm that works for you. (Yes, I’m intentionally being repetitious here.)
For me, this meant starting my running effort slow, trying a few short races (5Ks and a few other road races, one 4-miles and one 5-miles) before moving up to half-marathons, and eventually marathons. So I’m treating the page similarly as I treat the road. Learn the rhythm of the movement in the short race (short story) before going out for the longer marathon (novel).
As to what I’m writing in these stories, I can’t/won’t say. I’m all about sharing, folks, but one thing I don’t intend to share is the idea of what exactly I’m working on until I actually have the idea sprouting and spiraling upward in my head and have it down in some kind of readable format on the page. I’ll tease things along the way, but you’ll have a better idea once I’m done and the final product is there for you to view on whatever medium you choose for the mental-devouring of words. And then you can express your feedback as you see fit. One thing I will say — many, if not all of these stories, will be of the horror/sci-fi/supernatural element. I don’t really want to pigeonhole myself into writing for a particular genre, but that is my thinking at this point. Things could change, of course.
Daily word counts will be tracked in two places — my personal logbook (I’m still a big fan of writing longhand, you see), and on social media, particularly Twitter and Ello. I’ll provide more in-depth updates in forthcoming posts.
If you’re also taking part in this effort, feel free to weigh in or say hi, and all the best to you in your writing . . . here’s to keeping the rhythm going.
CHEERS!