GOODBYE CAMP NANO | APRIL ’18

 Camp NaNo (April, 2018) is FINISHED. 

That… happened. Wowza. Finally, it’s over.

This Camp was a bit more difficult for me than the past three Camps (yes, this was my fourth time!). My original goal was 50 hours, then I knocked it to 30 hours, then 30,000 words, and then, finally, 25,000 words. I won Camp at 25,000 words, over 23,000 of that being in Seek’s third draft.

I’m not bummed at having such a bumpy track of goals this Camp. In fact, I’m grateful. A large portion of the month was spent in traveling with my mom, siblings, and nieces for mom’s Lyme disease treatments, and the time it took to prepare for that trip and settle back down at home, and working on school and Paparazzi. The month was a steady one of hard work and planning as a family, with lots of prayer.

I learned more this month as I began Seek’s third draft. I saw how much Seek has remained the same story… but I’ve changed so, so much in these past few years. When I wrote up Seek back in July 2016, it was inspired by a crazy dream and some plotting like I’d never done before (I’d never plotted a book). And the story then was an out pour of my grieving heart as I searched for Jesus.

And I’m still seeking Jesus. I’ll never stop. The difference is I’m older now and that search is different. My fears are different.

That was a block I hit when editing/rewriting this draft. I’ve grown as a writer, and so when I started crunching down on scenes and adding things to clean/thicken the plot, I worried. Silly worries like ‘what if this is too short now?’ or ‘what if I make it worse by *doing a thing*?’ I began to let my fears of wanting to succeed bog me down… And that’s not what I should be seeking. I should never seek praise, glory, or success.

I must seek God. At all times. Always.

When I had trouble writing Seek – even though, yes, I had things plotted and had no reason to be hitting a wall with thing – I knew it was God trying to get my attention.

Sure, I had a ‘plan’, but I didn’t have God as my focus. So I now am aborting the fear and silly train and going for SEEKING JESUS and doing as He wills. If it doesn’t feel right, I gotta listen to Him!

I talked with Tory and my family some, trying to think outside the box on how to stay true to Seek’s story but also polish it up to be publish worthy. The new rough idea is to absolutely stay true to the original message/themes, clean up the writing, but not necessarily doing the whole draft from scratch. Sound like a vague plan? Well, it might be. But I’m going back to leaving things as such. It gives God more control.

Seek is on its way to being finished. I am still praying to be blessed enough to have it ready to publish by October. There’s still a lot of planning for that and things to do (eek!) but first, the novel must be done, ha! So I’m trusting God and taking things step by step.

~~~

Also, this Camp, I completed a small short story and entered it into a contest. It was my first actual short story in quite some time so I was happy about taking that first step back into small pieces, even if it doesn’t get accepted. I’ll be entering another short story contest this coming week, also… so… *runs off to write*

And I gave brief outlines/plots to a few novella/novel ideas this month. Just so I didn’t forget them all. And check out my Pinterest because a few of those story ideas got boards…

I got a Facebook author page! Ahh! Go like my page so we can hang out and have fun together!

That’s a wrap, folks! God bless,

– Angela

HOW DID CAMP NANO GO FOR YOU? DO YOU HAVE SOMEONE TO RAMBLE TO ABOUT YOUR STORIES/GOD?