Tag: Camp NaNo

Memories of the Dark Times

I haven’t written in almost a month. It’s been a rough month, a month of remembering, a month of irrational fear. It’s the ten-year anniversary of being diagnosed as bipolar. The tenth anniversary of being hospitalized. The tenth anniversary of not believing in myself.

It’s a harsh thing realizing that one’s invincibility is simply a state of hypomania. That one’s optimism is a mood swing. (Admittedly, it’s good to know that one’s suicidality is just a depression, but it’s hard to remember the lows when one is on a high like I was ten years ago).

Ten years later, I’m pretty stable, except for some depression in late winter and some giddiness early Spring. And superstitious worry that I will become unstable again every year at this time.

It’s a new normal for me, especially when writing, because I don’t feel overwhelmed by emotions when I write anymore. I wonder if my writing’s as flat as I feel compared to my amped-up days.

I am plagued with second-guessing my writing. I have strayed away from it. If you feel like sending good wishes, vibes, etc., please do!

Working toward writing

Looking at an outline

I have progressed as far as looking at my outline and making minor notes — mostly wrong names. I’m trying to figure out when Leah gets pregnant, because that’s a dramatic beat. Leah should get pregnant at a place where tension increases, because that’s how this is done.

I need to decide to build this story into a Save the Cat framework and move things as needed. By a Save the Cat format, I mean a story structure that walks the writer through a build-up, a tension state, the climax, and the aftermath. But I feel so much torpor, much dragging of feet. I need a good session with my husband and plenty of coffee or tea (or coffee and tea).

Photo by Ken Tomita on Pexels.com

Camp NaNoWriMo

I hope to motivate myself to write through Camp NaNoWriMo in April. I won’t get the story done, but I will get it started. Maybe I’ll fall in love with my characters and find the energy to write the story. I hope.

Wish me luck!

Writers’ Block

I’ve been suffering from writers’ block lately

I’m trying to finish Kel and Brother Coyote Save the Planet, but I’m dealing with serious writers’ block lately. I’ve been doing marketing stuff in the morning (even if the things I have down the pipeline are stalled) and sleeping in the afternoon. This may mean I’m depressed; I don’t know. But I do know I’ve been staring at that manuscript and coming up with nothing.

This is a job for Camp NaNo

NaNoWriMo, as I’ve mentioned in these pages, is a world-wide event where people attempt to write 50k words toward a novel in the month of November. Camp NaNo occurs in May and August, and it’s a smaller, less onerous event that I like to think of as training wheels for NaNo. You can pick your word count (as long as it’s over 10k) and feel free to work on something other than word count, such as editing. (Note: you can do that for NaNo as well, keeping in mind that 1 hour editing = 1000 words).

I’m going to put Kel and Brother Coyote as my Camp project (plus editing/plotting for another project) to see if it motivates me. Given that Camp (and NaNo) are a combination of gamification and camaraderie, I think I have a fighting chance.

I need a new project

Finishing up these old projects isn’t very motivating. In fact, I would really like to start something new. I just haven’t been inspired lately. I get motivated by relationship between people, and the short story list I have doesn’t seem to do that. (It’s very clever and science fiction-y, because my husband helped me with it.)

I want to write another novel. Real absorption into a world. But I need ideas for that as well.

Give me ideas

If you have any ideas for a romantic fantasy, let me know!

Another Camp NaNo

It’s April first, and (jokes aside) today is the beginning of the first session of Camp NaNo. This is the training wheels version of NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month), which is an international movement to help people come up with 50k words toward a novel.

In Camp NaNo, the writer sets a goal — hours revising, words, etc . The minimum goal is 10k words or 10 hours, although most people set higher goals than that. Then the writer fulfills that goal. There is accountability in the daily timer where the daily word/time count go.

My goal is to revise Reclaiming the Balance for 30 hours. That’s reasonable at 1 hour a day, although I think I will probably edit more than that most days. The story desperately needs editing, may even be unredeemable, but I’ll never know until I try.

Here’s some bling from Camp:

Everything, Anything, or Nothing?

My horoscope says my brain is worth of chatter. It is, if what you mean by chatter is “I really should doing this/that/the other thing” instead of coming up with any sort of new story ideas. And to some extent it’s right, given that I have an important assignment to grade, two interns to visit and two classes to prep for tomorrow. I will be busy today.

But I will manage some time for — what? I have to come up with an idea for Camp NaNo in April. Camp NaNo is like the training wheels version of NaNoWriMo — you can set a minimum of 10k words for a goal, there’s a lot more acceptance of doing something other than a novel during this time — it’s overall just a good warmup to a major project.

I have some back projects I could work on, if I can get engaged in them again. The main one is Gods’ Seeds, which deals not with gods per se, but the immortal Archetypes who have held societies’ cultural memories. The death of these memories will kill the people they represent. And now, as their leaders want to give cultural memory back to humans, a civil war between Archetype factions threatens widespread extinction across the Earth. One woman, one who touches mortality and the deity of the Archetypes, must realize her role and stop the immortals from fighting.

The other one would be fascinating, if I could spend six months in Krakow. This is not going to happen.

Part of my lack of ideas is this frustration with the idea of traditional publishing. I am beginning to consider self-publishing the rest of my catalog — fantasy and romantic fantasy, even as I struggle with the whole “your stuff will be considered better if you go through the gatekeepers.” It’s a big issue in the publishing industry, because self-publishing is confused with vanity publishing. But many famous authors started with self-publishing. I don’t think I will be famous, but I don’t want these books languishing in my computer files.

Or I could resubmit one of my works to another set of agents (or the same set of agents). That will take some work.

I don’t know what to do right now. Everything, anything, or nothing?

Avoidance

I’m getting avoidant toward Gaia’s Hands.

Honestly, every time I add something, I feel like I didn’t do enough, and I wrestle between going on and adding more plot and going back and adding more detail. 

I think I need to do the former, because I need a whole book to react to. But it doesn’t feel rewarding, just a long slog with no cookies at the end of the day.

I’d drop it entirely, but I’m in the middle of Camp NaNo, and I have six hours left to write till goal. I’ve only lost a NaNo once, and that was when Trump got elected. 

So I’m going to have to go on and write, with hopefully an aha reaction with my characters today.

An excerpt from Gaia’s Hands

I am getting so tired of editing.

That’s all I’ve been doing this summer — editing/rewriting whole novels, starting with Apocalypse (almost ready for querying) and continuing with Gaia’s Hands (my current source of despair). But it’s between that and putting them in a drawer somewhere, and I think that, now that I have a sense of what the novels need, they deserve the second (actually fifth) chance.

When I started writing, I thought that my first draft was the final product, which was my honor-student hubris speaking. Those rejections were the best thing to happen to me, because they made me work harder and learn more. 

That being said, it’s time to go back to editing Gaia’s Hands. My commitment to Camp NaNo is one hour per day, but I’ve been doing two just to be safe. 

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Now, an excerpt:

On Wednesday, Jeanne arrived at her office after her 11:00 class to find Dean Davidson, who she had previously only met at college meetings, standing at her office door with two other men. All wore bespoke suits that probably cost as much as her monthly salary.
“Jeanne,” Dr. Davidson said in his light, cultured voice as he stood at her office door with two other men. “This is Jack White, the Chief Financial Officer of Growesta — “ Jeanne shook hands with a middle-aged man with silver hair and a tan — “and Enzo Patricelli, Board of Directors.”

Jeanne shook Patricelli’s hand. His eyes, ice blue in a pale, strikingly handsome face, held eye contact for a hair more than was polite, and Jeanne wondered if he was from another country. He seemed foreign to her with his auburn hair falling just a little too long for Corporate America, and a slightly stiff manner about him. Austere, even chilly, but handsome in a compelling way. Jeanne wondered what his role in the proposal would be.

They discussed nothing significant on the trip to the steakhouse, nor did Jeanne expect to. Nor did they talk over the dinner of steak and potatoes. True to what she suspected, the men served the proposal with dessert and coffee.

“Jeanne,” Dr. Davidson led the gambit, sipping his coffee, “I understand you’re applying to become a full professor this fall.”

“Yes, that’s right,” Jeanne said.  “I have my materials together; you should receive them for review the first of August.” She remembered the earlier hints Davidson had dropped.

“I’ve noticed you haven’t brought any grants into the department lately,” Davidson replied.

Jeanne felt herself tense up, her hands flatten on the table. She took a deep breath. “I received a grant two years ago, a sizeable grant from the National Science Foundation.”

“Still,” Davidson said.  “I believe we can offer an opportunity that would not only fund your research, but would vastly improve your changes of promotion.”

“Okay,” Jeanne said, knowing she sounded tactless, “tell me about it.”

“Well,” Jack White began, “Growesta is reaching out to make connections with promising faculty in various agricultural institutions, and we decided to start here at home. We at Growesta have been following your career with interest. You have an excellent track record in research with your — uh — Jeannie Bean. You have media exposure in the Chicago market talking about your research, and you come off with integrity, all things we’d like to capture.”

Capture. Jeanne hoped that was an unfortunate choice of words. “So what is it you’re offering?”

“We’d like to invite you into a collaboration with us where you could help us promote new varieties of beans for the agricultural market. You’re known for your work with beans.”

Jeanne took a deep breath. “You’ve looked at my work. I bred a perennial bean for larger bean size to make it more interesting to a consumer market. These beans were developed to be planted within the context of permaculture gardens, which are by definition organic. Are you offering an opportunity for me to work with you on promoting beans for organic applications?“

“We aren’t pursuing organic strategies at this time,” White replied. “But someday, I suppose, we may get to that point. We want you to promote our herbicide-ready products to the public, who has become increasingly distrustful of our products. You have captured the imagination of — of at least the marketing department at the University, and the regional media as well, as is evidenced by your interviews with Chicago-area stations. We would like to have you speak for us.”

“But my research — “ Jeanne stammered. “It’s not —”

“I know what your research has been,” Dean Davidson interrupted smoothly, “and it has been excellent research. But look at the opportunties here. We’re talking about money for you to continue your research, which we will treat as a grant for the purpose of your portfolio and taxes. Upward of $50,000 a year. And this should pretty much guarantee your promotion to full professor.”

That money would fund a lot of research, Jeanne considered. But tenure … “You can’t guarantee me full professorship.”

“You would be surprised,” Patricelli spoke for the first time, in clipped words. “Corporate dollars go far into greasing the wheels of the college administration.” In his words, Jeanne heard promise — and warning.

“I don’t know,” Jeanne nearly stammered, meeting Patricelli’s eyes in their icy regard. “Please let me consider this offer.”

“Okay,” White said. “But we can’t wait for too long. The ad campaign would need to be drawn up soon.”

Vacation in Horicon

I haven’t written because I am having good family time in Wisconsin, celebrating the Fourth the way I like to: bratwurst and sauerkraut, good cheese and beer.

During summer, my dad lives in a camp trailer at The Playful Goose just outside of Horicon, on the Rock River and not far from Horicon Marsh. It’s a cozy place cluttered with hobbies: woodworking tools, winemaking, a ham and bean soup in the crock pot.  

It’s a great time for family stories, with my dad and my Uncle Ron telling their adventures from childhood (and the time Uncle Ron set off illegal fireworks years ago on the lawn of the house on Beloit Avenue). Storytelling is an important part of relating in my family.

It’s much easier to be around my family since I’ve been on my mood management medications. I used to feel so much pressure to talk that it was hard for me to be there. Now I’m relaxed, and I enjoy it a lot more.

I’ll leave on Sunday with more stories and more appreciation for my family.

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I’m in Camp Nano right now, and I’m trying to maintain two hours per day to keep up. My family’s accustomed to me ducking out to write. I’ll keep you posted.