While I am on a euphoric plateau, I want to pen down my reflections on participating in the April 2015 Camp NaNoWriMo.  The CampNaNoWriMo is more of a baby sister or brother to its November counterpart.  So a perfect and gentle way to ease myself into the world of professional writing by being a participant in it.   If you don’t know anything about Camp NaNoWriMo (and I happened to stumble upon it by chance) see this link.

The advantages for me (of many) include:

1.  I can set my own writing goals.  Whilst 50,000 word count is the bare minimum for a novel by most publishing standards, the children’s MG genre is more towards the 20k to 40k word count.  So I skewed towards the median 30k at first then I realised the book was nearly completed and brought it down to 25k word count.  Realistic for me.

2.  It’s flexible.  As I said you can change the word count up to 10 days before competition finishes.

3.  I felt part of a live community, if somewhat an inactive one at the start.  My first cabin had zero interaction so I changed it to another one more in line with Scifi genre.   Much more lively and motivating so even if you are allocated a cabin (which consists of up to 11 writers) you can still find something that suits.

4.  I learnt more about my characters and looked at my novel from different perspectives whilst also receiving great tips periodically by the organisers network of professional authors.

5.  Involved myself in my first live writing sit-in via Youtube link.  Wonderful to see the level of enthusiasm and comradeship.

So my baby learning steps all lead me to this point.  Achieving my 25k milestone surrounding myself with positive energy to get here.  Hooray!

Now what?

This is where the fun starts.  I ended my writing on a high…high action that is.  So with that I continue onward with the re-writing and re-writing.

Each chapter will be meticulously scrutinised and rewritten with intentional perfection. I hope!

I have been advised to leave it and come back to it in 6 months.  But I still have some writing in me and I will continue with the writing for now.  Plus there is a competition I aim to submit to in 3 weeks time.  They want a polished manuscript and it is all hands on deck for now to ensure that the adventure is as exciting and riveting on paper as it is in my head.