Hello beautiful writing world! If you’ve been following my site, you probably know a couple of things: I don’t post much, and I do photography. One of those is changing (hopefully!), and the other is evolving. Let me explain some history.

I got the idea for a scene from a book completely randomly. I really don’t remember how exactly it came to me, but I know I was very excited about it. This was November 2011. I wrote that scene down and sent it to my mom. She loved it! I decided I had to know more about the situation, so I started writing. I wrote several chapters, and then grew tired of it, so I stopped.

A couple of years later, I got a writing itch again while I was bored at work, and I decided to go back to my novel. I wrote for a week or two, then I grew tired again. I was at about 20,000 words, but I had no real direction or plot (I’m definitely a pantser!). I set my book aside again and forgot about it.

For the past several months, I’ve found myself craving some king of creative outlet. I was pulled toward drawing, even though I’ve never really enjoyed it, so I doodled a couple of sketches and hoped that would take care of the emptiness. It didn’t. The little black hole inside of me continued to grow, and I was starting to get very restless without an outlet.

Pushing those feelings to the back of my mind, I continued trying to enjoy fun activities instead. Planet Comicon, Kansas City’s pop/comic convention, promised fun and distraction, and the opportunity to collect a Firefly actress’s signature, so off I went. As always, the cosplays were fantastic, and the lines were long. In short, it was a great time!

It also sparked something in the form of a chance meeting. While waiting the 1.5 hours to meet Summer Glau, I casually chatted with the woman next to me about Firefly and such. I noticed that people kept asking her if she was here as a guest this year, to which she replied in the negative. She was just here as a fan. When I asked her for details on what she does and how she goes to cons as a guest, she informed me that she’s an author!

She showed me the copy of the book she’d brought, which she had written, and it looked awesome! Here is this regular person, a fan of Firefly and cons, like me, and she’s holding an actual, physical book that she wrote. It was motivating, to say the least. She gave me her information, told me to contact her when my book is done, then we continued to wait to meet Summer and eventually parted ways.

I didn’t realize at the time how important that chance meeting was, though. I had been looking for a way to express myself, and here I’ve had this book sitting in the dark spaces of my computer gathering dust. I decided I would finish that book, or at least write on it a bit more and see how it went.

In an effort to give it a legitimate try instead of falling into the same pattern as before, I decided to build up my social media accounts, particularly Twitter, and find some support and encouragement. What came from that was an entire online family in the form of the #turtlewriters group on Twitter. They have been absolutely amazing, and everyone encourages everyone else. We’re all in similar situations of writing slowly or taking years to finish for whatever reason, so it’s a whole group of people who know exactly what it’s like to take 5.5 years to write a single book.

I started this process about a month ago, May 22ish, and since then I’ve gained 1,300 followers, made countless friends and supporters, and written 19,000 words. I’ve given my book a title, fleshed out notes for each chapter, and actually developed a plot.

The biggest part of all of this, though, is starting in just a few minutes here. I’d heard about NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month), which takes place in November, but I’d never heard of Camp NaNoWriMo. The November event sets a goal of 50,000 words for you to type in one month, so I’ve never been interested in joining, since I know I’m just not at a point in my life where I think I could achieve that. Camp, however, lets you set your own goal!

After looking into all of the details, and finding out it’s not actually a camp you physically go to for a whole month, I joined the #turtlewriters cabin and will be participating in my first ever challenge!

Of course, the day before the challenge begins, I’ve decided to redesign my website instead of preparing for writing, but that’s really not out of character for me.

As I type, there’s a countdown going on to the opening of Camp for my timezone (CST, US). Did I make myself extremely nervous when I saw that on the website? Yes, I did. But I’m also excited for the challenge, and I think this experience will be huge for not only my book, but also my personal development as a writer.

I’ll post updates as the month goes on with word count and experiences. I’m starting Camp with a four day weekend, so I’m hoping to get a leg up on my goal, which I’ve set at 20,000 words.

So… that’s basically it. Wish me luck! Good luck to all of the other Camp participants! ❤