Hello again. Camp NaNoWriMo is well under way, and at the end of day one I changed my goal. I now intend to briefly summarize 50 of my story ideas to check them for completeness. And I am behind.

The day before Camp, I discovered 4TheWords, which is an interesting website which brings writing and gaming together. You type words to fight monsters, complete quests, and purify the land of a corruptive dust. Participants can choose to publish their work, read that of others, and earn special rewards for keeping a writing streak going. And, they have events which run simultaneously with the NaNoWriMo events. This is great fun. It is also useful for getting more words on the page, and would be ideal for the traditional NaNoWriMo challenge – go figure – but that is not what I meant to do this month.

I now have scene descriptions instead of bullet-points, action and dialogue instead of summaries. The work is progressing, and even in the right general direction; it is just not what I expected to do.

Getting caught up exploring something new was one thing that threw me off. Another was Covid-19.

Thus far, my household had avoided catching it. In the last week of June, one person tested positive. We all did our best to isolate him and provide care at the same time. To some extent it worked. He rested and healed. When he felt well, and according to the CDC website was allowed to leave isolation and enter quarantine, that is when the next person showed symptoms and tested positive. So those two simply swapped who was in isolation. Before she felt well, I began to feel worse. The home tests never confirmed I was positive, but I certainly had something. Either way, I pretty much slept for four days early in July, and rested a lot during the week after that.

Yes it is better out there; however, keep some level of vigilance.

We are now just over half-way through camp, and I have eight concepts summarized. My initial goal for the month would have me at 30 or so by now. I have a couple of real life things to finish, then I shall regroup and focus. If I can avoid getting distracted, it would not take long to fill out the basics of an idea. I might be able to catch up! Fingers crossed. Even if other business takes me longer, I can still finish this after Camp.

I will let you know how it goes. Best of luck to us all.