NaNo Camp: April 2023

[Shon Maxx]

This April is NaNo Camp. If you haven't participated in NaNo, National Novel Writing Month in November is an event where you have 30 days to write a 50k novel. Camp, on the other hand, which takes place both in April and August, is a mini-event where you give yourself a goal and try to achieve it. These encourage people to write by pushing them to the point where you're too busy trying to reach the finish line to worry about Writer's Block, etc. Also, since you're working on a rough draft, you don't need to focus on quality, only getting words on paper (or in a computer).

For this April, after reading (and rather disliking) The Alchemist, I'm working on my own version. I'm doing this for fun because I've spent the past year trying to get published but keep hitting a brick wall. So, for this I just need a fun project. Basically, a young man learning alchemy gets a small group to search for treasure, including a book of alchemy recipes.

Since, like The alchemist, this takes place in the middle east, I'm going to use Legends of Araby to generate some of the adventures. Plus this allows me an excuse to play some games. My only problem is while most characters in the group are easy to group by class (melee, missile, etc)., I'm not sure where my main character would fit. He's a rogue, slightly sneaky, good at technical things, but bad at combat. Throughout the story, he learns how to make potions to do things like turning invisible, hurling a vial at an enemy's feet to start a fire, or creating a smokescreen.

Anyone else participating?

Here's the link:

NaNo Camp

[Ed the Two Hour Wargames Guy]

Thanks for the heads up. I'll give it a try, have some written but stopped with the move.
The Alchemist is pretty old, came out in 1988. I read it, enjoyed it, but of course the company I was reading it with back then may have influenced me. 

[Shon Maxx]

It’s a good, uplifting story but I went in expecting an adventure with magic and such so I was somewhat disappointed.

[Ed the Two Hour Wargames Guy]

Mar 13, 2023 14:54:45 GMT Shon Maxx said:

It’s a good, uplifting story but I went in expecting an adventure with magic and such so I was somewhat disappointed.

I agree. It was different than what I had expected and would not have even read it if my friend hadn't given it to me.

[atomicfloozy]

I'm using the Camp as an effort to "catch up" on various blog projects. In addition to writing, I'll also be counting painted miniatures - 500 words for each completed 28mm/30mm figure; 50 words for each completed 10mm or 6mm figure. The writing will be limited to fantasy topics and the figure painting will be anything from fantasy to historical and science fiction figures.

I set the goal kind of low, I'm anticipating spending more time recovering from dental work than being able to write, but who knows?

[Shon Maxx]

Mar 14, 2023 15:21:26 GMT atomicfloozy said:

I'm using the Camp as an effort to "catch up" on various blog projects. In addition to writing, I'll also be counting painted miniatures - 500 words for each completed 28mm/30mm figure; 50 words for each completed 10mm or 6mm figure. The writing will be limited to fantasy topics and the figure painting will be anything from fantasy to historical and science fiction figures.

I set the goal kind of low, I'm anticipating spending more time recovering from dental work than being able to write, but who knows?

Good ideas for counting painting as writing. And don’t stress the low goals. Camp is supposed to be more laid back anyway. I’m going with 20k for my goal.

Also I’m having a little fun with mine. My project is Book 8 in a series. However, Books 1-7 don’t actually exist so it’s like jumping into the middle of a series. I found out NaNo and Word both count footnotes towards word count so I’ll use those to refer to ‘past books.’