Tomorrow is the start of another session of Camp NaNoWriMo, and I will be moving into a virtual cabin there with a klatch of VP classmates and Slack friends. Our cabin has been dubbed Murdercabin, so you know it’s a good one.
I’ve done regular NaNo for years (and “won” it intermittently), but my first effort at Camp NaNo, back in April, was not a success. I was doing well for the first, I don’t know, eight days or so! And then the rest of April happened. April was … not the cruellest month, but definitely kind of a shitheel. So here we are in July and I’m going to try it again. Cross your fingers for me.
July will not be a shitheel! July is actually required by law to be nice to me because it is my birthday! Also Readercon! They happen on the same weekend, in fact! Smack in the middle of the month — and my goal (oh God, I’ve used the word goal before, haven’t I? look, I’ll just wedge those other goals into the coat closet and we’ll pretend you never saw them) is to have some coherent, completed thing — completed, like, with an ending and everything! — that I can talk about knowledgeably at Readercon. By Readercon. So, you know, more or less two weeks.
This should go swimmingly.
The Camp NaNo site encourages you to post a little mock-up cover for your project, so I did the thing. Ha ha, my Art Skillz™, let me show you the bleak and gaping void where they do not exist! But I adore this photograph — one of many supremely spooky photos taken by Nick Brandt at Tanzania’s toxically alkaline Lake Natron — and the world it suggests.
The Two Rivers world is not a nice place. This is a good picture for it.
Anyway, cross your fingers for a gentle July.
Current comps: It’s City of Blades meets Range of Ghosts, with a twist of Annihilation.
Writing: Did morning pages. Dithered about novel-things in preparation for NaNo work, made some character notes re: Vulo for myself. Rewrote the same three sentences a dozen times. Not much useful elsewise. (Assuming any of the foregoing was useful.)
Daily things: Today is my mother’s birthday.
Walked. Made cookie dough so tomorrow I can bring cookies to new neighbors. Played hostess to a trio of four-year-olds and introduced them to the wonder of limeade, which they all proceeded to refer to as lime-onade. Did not introduce them sufficiently to sunscreen, whoops. Brought honor to my child’s house by single-handedly capturing our neighborhood Pokémon Go gym for the first time, and then valiantly defending it for exactly five minutes and fifty-five seconds until yellow team’s goons rolled back in.
See you next month, tomorrow.
wren wallis 