Camp NaNo preps

As they say in Dutch; een goed begin is het halve werk (well begun is half done). Which is particularly true for writing endeavours, I find, otherwise I find myself staring at blank page for the first half an hour of a writing project. Chris Baty, the founder of NaNoWriMo, wrote a book called 'No plot? No problem!' but then he went on to say that his writing projects always spiralled wildly out of control and how he had to introduce aliens or magic to get everything back on track. But then, he is one of the few people to have won NaNo every year, so maybe there is something to say for his strategy. However, I am too much of a control freak to go down that route, so I actually did some planning!
Step one: something to write on. My previous personal laptop was burgled from my previous house, and since I was low on cash I didn't buy a proper replacement laptop, and have been annoyed with what I had ever since (it was slow, the keyboard wasn't centered in the middle of the laptop, it was slow, it had lots of bloatware, it was slow, I never got around to installing it properly, and also, it was veeeeery slow). I could write on my work laptop, but that would mean the temptation of opening my work email and getting some things 'out of the way' would be too hard to resist; good for my work ethic, not so good for my NaNo project. So, I decided to buy a new laptop. Which, of course, I didn't pick out myself, but my computer savvy boyfriend took care of that. It arrived yesterday, just in time, and this is in fact the first ever blog post from my new machine. So far, I'm loving it, but so far, I haven't done that much with it. We'll see whether I still like it 20,000 (or more) words down the line!
Step two: a plot. As has happened with all my great stories, the plot somehow came to me. J. K. Rowling is always saying how she suddenly got the idea of Harry travelling to Hogwarts while she was waiting for the train to Manchester to depart, and while this sounds very contrived, it actually is how it works for me; I get this image in my head, just one moment in the story, with the setting and the atmosphere, and I know which way it will go. In this case, I was thinking about my successful 2015 NaNo novel, combined with a long-held ambition; to write a story set in one day. Many of my favourite novels, from The Hours to Saturday to Mothering Sunday, are set in the space of a single day. "And in that day, a whole life", to paraphrase Virginia Woolf through Michael Cunningham. So that is what it will be; the central problem of the story (different from the central problem in the 2015 NaNo) will be resolved in that single day.
Step three: characters. As I am doing a somewhat rewrite of my earlier NaNo, I could have just nicked the characters from that story and be done with it. However, for me, that doesn't quite work. I have to know some basics about the character, what they are like, but not everything (and I know my 2015 NaNo characters pretty well by now). I don't keep character fact sheets in which I write down everything from the colour of their eyes to the name of their pet; in fact, usually my characters don't have a name themselves when I start writing. It is like I will meet them through the story: if I know too much about them beforehand they won't appear on the page properly. I do have to have a feeling of who they are, how they will respond to certain situations, what motivates them. So, for each of them I have written down key characteristics plus their answer to the central problem of the novel. They all have a 'working name', which is based on the person I know in real life that is closest to them, or the actual character name if I already know it. The rest I will discover as I write. So far, not a character has failed to surprise me in one way or another as I write, and I am curious to see who will populate my story this time.
Step four: time to write. Ah, this is going to be the difficult one. I usually keep my Novembers relatively free of social events, but this April caught me somewhat unawares, and is also very much full with evenings and weekends filled with events. To keep things manageable, I have set my goal to 20,000 words, but we'll see if I even get that far.
Step five: people to write with. I am not a social writer; I like to curl up on the couch and just hammer away at the keys without making eye contact with another living creature for an hour and a half, but once in a while I do like to attend 'write ins'; social gatherings where people NaNo (yes, that is a verb) together. Camp NaNo doesn't really have any write ins in the Netherlands, but it does have cabins; virtual groups consisting of max 20 people who spend camp 'together'. I have been randomly put into a cabin which seems to consist of nothing more than a message board, on which not a lot of the participants have written anything. I will probably opt out of this cabin and move to another one once I find a set of more active participants. However, this is not my main focus, as I don't really need the motivation of others to keep writing (basically, what I need is time. See also step four). But still, it is fun to have a group of peers around you.

So, that's about it on the preparation front. Writing starts tomorrow, which is Easter Sunday and not a good day for me, as I have two social events lined up. My writing will therefore probably start on Easter Monday, when I can get a good couple of hours in. We'll see how it goes, and I will try to keep this blog updated in between getting the 20k words out.