The August session of Camp NaNoWriMo (http://campnanowrimo.org/) begins in about three and a half days. I finished revising my manuscript weeks ago, so hopefully I’ll focus more on Camp this month.
Unfortunately, I’m not sure I have any ideas fleshed-out enough to start working on in three days. I do have ideas though, and I’m going to give it my best shot, but if I sense trying to get this thing written out in 30 days or less is ruining my manuscript, I won’t hesitate to give up on NaNoWriMo and let my project breathe freely.
I’ve turned my thoughts to this project over the last few days, and I keep a list of random thoughts and ideas relating to it. It’s a sort of brainstorming thing I do; I have my main characters down pretty well and I know the basics of the story, but I’m not sure how it’ll get from one point to another. So I spend time thinking about the setting, the world in which this story takes place, and things that exist in it and how these characters would react to them. I don’t always use everything I write down, and in fact much of it never comes up at all, but it’s there in this world and it makes the world a little bit more alive, which in turn makes the characters a little bit more real. Hopefully I’ll have enough to start working with in three days.
I’ve started going back over the archives at QueryShark (http://queryshark.blogspot.com/). So far I haven’t come across anything I didn’t read before (maybe I did finish reading over them and I just don’t remember) but it’s worth a second read anyway. I’ve already stumbled across one tip I actually don’t follow in my own query letter. I feel like I have a good reason for not following it, but don’t we always feel that way about a mistake we’re in the process of making? I was sure I was right yesterday, but I’ve been thinking it over and now I’m leaning toward “maybe I’m wrong”. But I’ll keep reading the archives and writing down anything my query does contrary to the Shark’s advice, and then I’ll go over it a few times. Obviously the Shark won’t always be right and every agent has different opinions (which is why it’s important to check each agent’s page for what they do or don’t like) but that blog has a lot of priceless knowledge and information and is probably right more often than not. I’m also actually considering submitting my own query now, if I feel like the archives alone aren’t getting my query to where I’d like it to be.
That’s about all going on in David World right now. What are you up to? Are you participating in Camp NaNoWriMo next month?
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