Tag: Camp NaNoWriMo

Blog, NaNoWriMo, Read-a-thon

July Read-a-Thon Update: Day 22

It’s the last day! Wow…

I’m gonna try to get more reading in before midnight, but I also have to finish up my Camp NaNoWriMo piece as well—I’m only down about 800 words, so I’m not worried about that so much, but it cuts into my reading time.

Current count is:

  • 61 pages from Detection by Gaslight: 14 Victorian Detective Stories by Douglas Greene [Ed.]. Notes: no update.
  • 26 pages from On Looking: Eleven Walks with Expert Eyes by Alexandra Horowitz. Notes: no update.
  • 150 pages of A Study in Scarlet by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Notes: finished.
  • 141 pages of The Sign of the Four by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Notes: finished.
  • 295 pages of The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Notes: no update.
  • 232 pages of Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic by Alison Bechdel. Notes: finished.
  • 110 pages of Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present by Harriet Washington. Notes: harrowing reading…
  • 100 (manuscript) pages of my friend’s WIP. Notes: finished.
  • 113 pages of The Seven-Per-Cent Solution by Nicholas Meyer. Notes: almost done with the paper, and about halfway through the book.

Running page count: 1,238

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Blog, NaNoWriMo

Camp NaNoWriMo Stats: Midway

Well, that’s the halfway point. Here’s a screen cap of my stats on the Camp site, as of midnight of the 15th:

Not too shabby, huh? My cabin is oddly silent (hit me up if you have an active cabin open for one more member!), but I’m plugging along. I’m in Washington DC until tomorrow night, so I’m not sure how much writing I’m going to get done, but I purposefully have been keeping ahead of my goal, just in case something like this happened, so I’m not going to worry too much about it.

Also, Washington DC! This is the best. I love it here. (Even if it’s really awfully humid…)

Pictures are going up on Instagram, if you’d like to see what I’m up to.

Blog, NaNoWriMo, Read-a-thon

July Read-a-Thon Update: Day 4

Doing a read-a-thon and NaNoWriMo session at the same time is a lot of time spent reading and writing!

Checked off my list: over 4,000 words towards my 40,000 word Camp NaNo goal—including 1,000 words of poetry, 1,000 words on a photo essay about my family’s military history for my creative non-fiction class, and work on my memoir—and about a quarter of the reading I need done by Tuesday.

I’ve been making an effort to stay at least one day ahead on my NaNo writing, but I want to get 2-3 days ahead before I leave for Washington DC on Monday night, since I won’t have guaranteed internet access again until Thursday evening, when I get back.

Page count so far:

  • 61 pages from Detection by Gaslight: 14 Victorian Detective Stories by Douglas Greene [Ed.]. Notes: no update.
  • 26 pages from On Looking: Eleven Walks with Expert Eyes by Alexandra Horowitz. Notes: This one is fascinating. Horowitz is both informative and informal in tone, dropping in tidbits of the wealth of information her companions shared on their walks, and inspiring me to be more mindful of the world around me. I highly recommend this book! I think I may finish it on the plane to DC!
  • 26 pages of A Study in Scarlet by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Notes: The first of the Sherlock Holmes reading! I’m very excited, and remembering how very much I love these stories. I want to finish this one today (I’m ambitious that way) and move on to the next reading for tomorrow.

Coming up: the rest of A Study in Scarlet, The Sign of the Four, and four stories from The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. Hopefully, I’ll also get to 22,837 words on my manuscript, which will mean it won’t matter if I don’t write in DC.

Running page count: 113

Blog, NaNoWriMo

Camp NaNoWriMo July 2014!

If you follow me on other social media, you may be aware that I’m participating in Camp NaNoWriMo this month, with the aim to produce roughly 40,000 words of poetry and memoir.

I started out planning to just put  together a volume of poetry and essays, but one of the essays spiralled and expanded, and now I appear to be writing a memoir, which is a big departure from my previous writing. I’ve done some research and talked to other writers, and I have sort of mapped my course, based on their advice: I’m going to write down everything I remember—the piece will cover my feelings about my father from two years before he died to about a decade later.

A lot of this is stuff I’ve probably needed to write about for a long time. I’ve been trying to sit in my feelings when they come up, all the nostalgia and tears, and allow myself to feel them and remember. I don’t like crying (as a result of how much I did for years after he passed), so this has been a challenge, but it’s one worth taking on, if only for the potential closure.

Once I’ve gotten all my thoughts and recollections out, I’m going to read through all of my poetry and journal entries from that time, and then I’m going to interview my mother, other family members, and family friends who were adults when I was a child to see where my account differs from theirs, and either confirm or disprove some of my thoughts. Again, these are conversation I’ve probably been needing to have for a long time, and I’m making the opportunity to do it now.

Hopefully, I’ll come out of the month with at least 40,000 words written, and the beginnings of a publishable piece on childhood grief and its effects on adulthood, as experienced by me. If you’re interested in daily word count updates, you can follow those on my Twitter, and I’ll be sharing some resources and interesting info on my Tumblr. Comment if you’re participating—I’d love to hear what others are working on!