Camp NaNoWriMo begins!

I love that I get to enjoy the writing high of doing NaNoWriMo three times a year now, instead of just once.

This is my third summer doing Camp NaNo (although you can't really call it summer yet...).  I always miss the greater community that you find during November, with the forums and all the scheduled write-ins, but I also really like the greater flexibility of camp -- being able to set your own word count goal and (this year) what you plan on writing -- as well as the ability to request your wrimo friends as cabinmates.  I do wish they had given us a way to track things like editing as well, but I've managed in the past by tracking pages and converting that into words

Unfortunately, I didn't finish the prep I wanted to do before April started.  I had planned on refamiliarizing myself with my novel and finishing the timeline I had started in December when I bought Aeon.  (That timeline software, which NaNo '14 winners were given a discount on, has proven to be very useful for organizing the timeline of events on the current novel I'm working on, and I'm guessing it will be extremely useful for my Ruby Ransome series as well.  It takes time to set up a well-thought-out timeline for your novel, but in my mind the organizational aspect of the timeline software makes it totally worth the time involved.)

So last night when my NaNoWriMo friends and I got together for a mini kickoff party, instead of writing I worked on my timeline.  I made great progress, though, and stayed very focused the entire time -- a big achievement for me, considering that meant somewhere around 4 hours of work.  Hopefully I'll be able to finish with the timeline today and get started on writing tomorrow.

I always love the first few days of NaNo.  It feels like the beginning of a new relationship: so much promise and potential.  Anything could happen during the month -- we'll just have to take it day by day and find out!