Five days in, reporting to you live from
Camp NaNo-/NaPo-WriMo!
In any group, there has to be one
trouble maker. Alien Magpie, Durham
& I wanted to cabin with Fuzzball, and dutifully made our requests to NaNo.
After rejecting various cabins, only the
three of us were housed together while Fuzzball was off somewhere in a holding
cell. I suspect it’s because he’s
Finnish and we three live in the UK; he didn’t have the proper documentation to
cross borders.
But never let it be said that trouble makers
aren’t resourceful. Fuzzball Bones created a secret Facebook clubhouse for us, and The Flying Wombats were born. Occupation shot up from four to twelve in a
matter of hours. Soon the projects were
being announced and as fate would have it, there was a classicist among us to
raise the intellectual level.
Durham: 12 short stories, each inspired by one of the
Greek pantheon, but it’s realism.
Managed to finish Hephaestus (with a whisper of Oedipus) but can’t type
up as fast as I can write. Bugger.
The deceptively sweet looking, flute
playing Kooky Spice revealed her darker side:
A
fantasy story that I’ve been wanting to write for 4.5 years. There will be assassinations, torture, and
deity resurrection involved. Wheee!
And Magpie took us into an entirely new
genre:
I’m
doing a comic on Zev and Troy being super cool assassins. Fewer words should mean less time, but it
doesn’t. Fewer words take much, much
longer.
I’m the sole early riser, which in this
cabin, equates to evil incarnate, but by 10 a.m. on Day One, I’d killed off an innocent
bystander while the others hadn’t poured their first cup of coffee. They call me evil because they envy me. The murder-a-thon was on.
Magpie: I haven’t killed anyone yet, but I’m only
just up. Breakfast before murder and all
that.
Kooky
Spice: No deaths yet. But I have the first one planned.
Durham: I’m biding my time til Hades.
Fuzzball: You guys and your bloodlust are making me
reconsider. I don’t want to be the odd
one out after all...
The cabin bonded during the body count, writers offering surrogate murders for those not ready to commit
mortal sins. Then it began to sink in, the
reality of how difficult a challenge any NaNo month really is.
Fuzzball: I’m
writing a horror story. With strippers
and drag queens and probably serial killers. Before it
actually began, the idea of NaNo was so exciting and I couldn't wait to get
started! I had my characters, I had a
vague plot, I was looking forward to letting the writing just happen and fill
in the blanks, and I was sure by the end of it I'd have the best thing I'd ever written
in my hands! Four days into it... My plan feels TOO vague, my characters aren't
sure what they want to say and finding the time and the motivation to actually
put words on the page is proving so tricky I'm 2k behind on my word count....
BUT! I just figured out my ending and writing down that scene felt so
rewarding! NaNo is like a roller coaster, and you just got to love it.
It became obvious that some type of
motivation was needed. A crew of this
ilk wouldn’t bat an eye at a threat.
Fortuitously, Camp started on Easter Monday, so chocolate was in
bountiful supply. But then they wanted
beer. And rum. And mind altering drugs. There were repercussions.
Durham: Where
is my voice? Will it come? Did I drop it somewhere? I didn’t plan enough. And NaNo is a hungry fucking child and I don’t
have time to feed you!!!!!
But these are the conditions where serious
writing happens. Tips from Neil Gaiman
and Josh Whedon were posted. Word counts
were compared. Offers of feedback were
given. Pet rats were smuggled into camp. (Three guesses whom those belonged to.)
Five days in confirms what I’ve often
said, that writers need writers to write.
Writing is about the ability to imagine, to pretend, to play. While we can do those things inside our own
heads, group play energises and supports us.
Kudos to NaNo-NaPo-WriMo and all those groups out there supporting
writers.
Now it’s time for me to get NaNo
cracking. Think of all the murders I’ve not
written yet. A waste, I tell you. A waste.
Happy Wombat.
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