My Writing Mojo Is Back: Camp NaNo & ROW80 Round 3

 Note: I am aware there are no paragraph breaks in the published post.  I have no clue why as they exist in the editor version.  I will try to figure it out later but it has been a long time since I've tried to read code so I don't know if I will succeed. Fixed! Sorta. Used Shift/Enter to create a break at the end of each paragraph as Blogger seemed to be ignoring the plain paragraph code no matter how many times I hit enter.  Weird.

8 Foot Workstation Viewed from Kitchen Looking Toward Front Window

So I just recently signed my third lease for my 400 square foot unit which made me realize I've been living here alone for two years.  Along with that realization came another--that some time in the last six months the fog of grief and the chaos of the move had lifted.  Proof of that was in the fact that I had both my writing and my reading mojo back.  I'll talk about the reading in a future post.  This is about the writing.

About three months ago I borrowed via the Libby Ap the latest Julia Cameron book Writing for Life and after I'd read about halfway thru I got the itch to try morning pages again.  I've lost count of the number of times I've started that exercise over twenty years and then just stopped after a handful of days.  I'm not a morning person.  But I started on May 20 and I haven't missed a day yet and I started noticing that I wanted more.  That maybe I was ready to engage with my creative writing projects again.  I'll discuss more about my engagement with Julia Cameron's book in a later post.  Maybe when I review the book?  This post is just my announcement of intent.

I know that I always do better with intent when there is some level of accountability involved and the two ways that have worked in the past are NaNoWriMo and ROW80 so I'm taking advantage of Camp NaNo July to create the project and rejoining ROW80 as well.

Right 2/3 of Workstation Showing Wheeled Table and Wheeled Cart

Everything in my unit must be multifunctional and my workstation can not be excepted.  The wheeled table in the middle is also where I eat meals.  As well as write morning pages by hand and fill out paperwork and play Boggle or Scrabble against myself, takes notes by hand from a tree book, fix small items needing glue or tape, make grocery lists.  And much more.
 

This inability for me to keep my writing workspace sacrosanct has been hard to accept and caused many a false starts that were too easily frustrated by a cluttered surface just when I had that brilliant idea.  Slowly though, I've learned to clear the clutter frequently enough that when inspiration strikes I only need a handful of minutes to switch functions.

But now of course it is going to be less about inspiration and more about intent.

The table in the middle is mostly used for writing by hand and meals.  I sometimes roll it around so that I can sit facing the window and then open the blinds.  The cart being on wheels too allows for several different configurations to the workstation but this is my favorite.  When I need more space to spread books and papers out I can set up a board on boxes on the couch and have a wrap-around L shaped desk that adds another 4 to 6 feet of space.

Note the two notebooks atop the wheeled cart.  These relate to my Camp NaNo Project which is NOT another story.  

The notebook on the right, a three ringed binder holds all that exist of the hard copy of my stories.  This in spite of the fact I've been doing Nano and sometimes Camp NaNo since 2004 and ROW80 regularly between 2012 and 2020. As well as JuNoWriMo a number of times. That's a lot of stories.  And last November I noticed that the NaNo site was keeping track of individual's total wordcount on our profile and mine went over a million by the end of the month.  That's a lot of words.   And that doesn't even account for the ROW80 and JuNoWriMo events I joined and for each one started a new 'novel'.  Most of which I've not looked at again since the end of their respective challenge. And all of which would be lost forever if I don't rescue them out of pixel purgatory before I die.

An issue become desperate lately is the fact that over 90% of the stories are in the same story world.  In fact they follow a number of generations of the same family from just after the Civil War thru the present.  That's seven or eight generations.  I think.  I've lost count.  And that is part of the problem.  Since this storyworld was my passion I always wanted to remain in it but for the sake of the NaNo rules I started a new POV character story arc each time.

Well I started developing another character for the November NaNo and I am really loving her.  But I don't know where she fits in the family.  I need to find her place on the family tree and on the timeline and all of that info is trapped in a minimum of two dozen files except for what I think I remember.  But I can't trust my memory as well as I used to.  So it is time I had a reference book or file or both in which all of the Who What Where When Why and How is in one place.  Something like what TV series use and call the series bible.

That is what the second notebook--the spiral one--in the pic above is for.  Well there is already a computer file version created and dabbled in during previous ROW80 when this was one of the several goals alongside the current story wordcount goal but I also need a physical grab and go for handy reference.  This is how I describe the plan in the project summary at NaNoWriMo:

This  (storyworld bible) would include: existing and planned story titles, lists of POV characters, lists of supporting characters, family trees, time lines for each character, each story and the historical events current for each story, character sketches and monologs, settings from landscapes to floorplans, lists of research that needs tending to for each story, lists of scenes written and yet to be written, and whatever other info I encounter that seems to need to be available no matter which story or which POV I'm writing at the moment.

 

In order to accomplish this I'm going to be reading through all of the individual story files created for each new challenge to cull the info and note where I find contradictions and plot holes, factual errors and unconvincing character behavior.

 

As I collect the info and organize it I will be considering where two or more stories need to be compressed into one since sometimes starting a WriMo Project with a new POV character made it a 'new' novel only for the sake of the challenge.

 

One of the first things I will do is collect all the titles of begun and planned stories and post it in the excerpt form below.  There are many more than are reflected in the titles of my NaNo projects since some are yet undeveloped and some were developed for other writing challenges or before I encountered NaNo in 2004.

Workstation Right 1/3 Plus Couch

The couch which can extend desk area is also my bed tho you might be forgiven for wondering if it belonged to a child.  No those are my own stuffed critters all collected since I moved in and it is nearly equal in volume to myself.  This is something I never did as a child.  I always preferred the baby dolls and they weren't cuddly.

Having two laptops active will be temporary.  I'm in the process of breaking in the Dell Windows 11 on the left and currently it is dedicated to writing only.  But it's already been several months and I need to get serious about setting it up to handle everything as the 7 year old HP Windows 10 has been glitchy for over a year.  This is the first time I've had to handle breaking in a new computer without live-in tech support.  Add my vision issues and the challenge is overwhelming.

So this is where I make my goals explicit for ROW80 Round 3:

• Morning pages daily.  Average 40 minutes (ala Julia Cameron The Artist Way and Writing For Life)
• Storydreaming with notebook for noting ideas for characters or scenes. (ala Robert Owen Butler From Where You Dream)  30 minutes per day
• Working on the Fruits of the Spirit (aka FOS) Storyworld Bible at least 30 minutes per day at least 5 days per week.  I'm sure this will expand as I get involved but I need to set a minimum for that jumpstart.
• Weekly Artist Date (ala Julia Cameron)  This is about doing something to recharge your creative battery.  I'll go into more detail in one of the check-ins.
• A minimum of 5 minutes of physical activity.  Either a walk outside with my caregiver or a session on my mini-tramp, or pacing the floor between front and back door.  I hope to increase the time to 10 minutes by the end of July.  I know I can't tolerate more than 5 on the tramp when restarting it tho.  The walks outside do already average 10 to 15 minutes but I can't count on there always being time for them on all or any of the four days I have the caregiver.  They have to be squeezed in between the necessary chores and errands.
• I want to reengage with my blog so: Two blog posts per week besides the two check-ins. One about encountering other people's stories via print, video or audio which can include formal reviews.  The other about a current fiber art WIP or about one of my personal challenges: widowhood, independent living with visual impairment and autism and issues related to health and aging among them.