Last month was CampNaNoWriMo, or Camp National Novel Writing Month, the April event where writers and authors attempt to reach 50,000 words of a novel or another substantial word count. It’s considered the lighter version of November’s NaNoWriMo.
I’ve talked about my experiences with NaNoWriMo before. While I think attempting to cram 50k of writing in 30 days has it’s merits, it’s not without it’s downsides. To summarise, the biggest issue, at least in my experience, is that it takes a lot of work and the end result is rarely worth it. It becomes about quantity, not quality. Last November, I attempted to make the month more productive with somewhat successful results, and this year I’ve taken that experience and decided that my monthly writings will be focused on writing productively rather than to meet an arbitrary word count.
I most definitely did not write 50k. I also, unfortunately, fell a tad short of my monthly writing goal, completing 3 works instead of 4. So, yeah… It was a bit of a meh month.
Nevermind. Good news is I still have a new snippet to share with you all today. This snippet is from the same project I shared in my last monthly update, a sci-fi novel, and there is a recurring character mentioned, so check that out:
Science fiction story sneak-peak #1
After she’d left Chamberton in his home, Spider had made her escape by scaling the trellis, walking across the rooftop, and dropping down onto the street via the garden wall. As soon as she was far from the house, she contacted her commanding officer to let him know that Chamberton was, as he put it, ‘dealt with’.
“Very well done, Spider,” CO said. “I’m impressed with your progress. After a couple more assignments, you might be ready for Project MOBY.”
“That would be an honour.” She’d tried to keep the hope out of her voice. Hope meant she wasn’t ready. Hope meant that a part of her still yearned to go back to when she enlisted and tell her younger self to run from battle, to run from the weapon she’ll be turned into. People with hope were incapable of working efficiently, incapable of keeping nothing but the mission on their minds. It was the honour she was supposed to crave. A promotion to Project MOBY meant she was irreplaceable. It meant that she was the most efficient of her comrades. There was no greater joy than that.
“Now, now,” teased CO, having heard her eagerness. “No spider ever caught prey without patience.”
Want To See More?
In January 2023, I decided I would try my very best to stick to my writing goals to keep me on track towards publication. To that end, I’m sharing a little bit of my creative writing on the first Wednesday of every month. You can read all of them by following the tag Monthly WIP Update or by clinking the link to take you directly to an archive of all my sneak-previews! If you want to read a story in full, I have original works available for free.
If you enjoyed this, please let me know.
