Camp NaNo July '23: NettieWIP

Broke 20k today! It's 20k mostly of garbage, like we're 90 pages in and the investigation of the mystery has barely gotten started, but I had a breakthrough today that should help when I do draft 2.

Which will basically be a total rewrite, but my second drafts often are, so it's fine lol.

Today's line of choice, me describing a bad guy:

Tom Barlow had never worn a ridiculous necktie in his life and likely never would.

RIGHT I forgot to update in here last night but anyway



I mean I'm still going because I'm probably only halfway through this draft, but the POINT IS I won Camp NaNo in 10 days, what up

I didn't set out intending to write Nettie as autistic, but the further I get in this book the more I think she might be autistic lol.

(This also happened with Benjamin in Remarkable Retirement - about whom I kept getting DMs from a Twitter mutual and autistic librarian like "reason number 348 why Benjamin is autistic" and of course it was all things I do I plead the fifth - and Daniel in FakeDeathgagement.)

- finds eye contact too intimate/uncomfortable
- resting face makes everyone thinks she's angry or unhappy (admittedly she is actually also very grumpy, but)
- special interests: lighthouses, her wife
- hates and reacts very strongly to change
- goes nonverbal when beyond upset
- doesn't get people & feels like she's bad at interacting with people
- blunt and straightforward, says what she means

...actually quite a few people in this book are autistic-coded in various different ways lol, Nettie's just probably the most obvious

What do you want to bet I suddenly abandon this and go back to FakeDeathgagement instead for no reason

Jumping ship midway through is the NaNo spirit!!

I WILL BE STRONG 😤😤😤

...my latest problem is that Nettie and Cal want to be in a romance novel and I'm like girls please you can have a smooch but not until late in book two oh my god, please just solve this murder

BLUE LET THEM HAVE A ROMANCE NOVEL. They probably deserve it!! Kissing plus solving murder!

THEY CAN HAVE ROMANCE LATER!! KISSING PLUS SOLVING MURDER IN THE SECOND BOOK!! RIGHT NOW JUST SOLVING MURDER!!

BluesClues wrote:Broke 20k today! It's 20k mostly of garbage, like we're 90 pages in and the investigation of the mystery has barely gotten started, but I had a breakthrough today that should help when I do draft 2.

Lol, the way I see it it’s like slow burn but rather than the romance being slow burn, the plot itself is

BluesClues wrote:THEY CAN HAVE ROMANCE LATER!! KISSING PLUS SOLVING MURDER IN THE SECOND BOOK!! RIGHT NOW JUST SOLVING MURDER!!

KISS KISS KISS


Anyghost, I was just checking up on this thread and it’s a really neat concept hope you achieve your goals!

GengarIsBestBoy wrote:Lol, the way I see it it’s like slow burn but rather than the romance being slow burn, the plot itself is

SLOW BURN BUT IT'S THE PLOT XD I'M CRYING THAT IS SO ACCURATE

It actually EVENTUALLY got rolling (I've been bad at updating but I am considerably further along now lol)

HUZZAH AGAIN, for I have hit 50k on the manuscript AND outlined the remainder of the book! hopefully that'll make it easier to draft the rest because I have a clearer idea of where I'm going now. THE END IS IN SIGHT, FRIENDS.

Hit 55k and think I might really for real be able to really finish this draft tomorrow!

OH MY GOODNESS!!!! AHHHHHHHHH.

Snoink wrote:OH MY GOODNESS!!!! AHHHHHHHHH.

AHHHHHHHHHHH I am writing as we speak!!

HUZZAH TIMES TWO.

July 10: hit month's goal of 30,000 words
July 31: hit month's not-so-secret secret goal of finishing a first draft, 60,819 words

Spoiler

image ID: tweet from E.M. Anderson on July 31, with two images attached, reading: "HUZZAH TIMES TWO. goal for (hashtag) CampNaNo: 30k. real goal but I never quite said so bc I didn't want to scare it off: finish the first draft of (hashtag) NettieWIP. accomplished: thing 1 (July 10) & thing 2 (July 31)."

Attached images are (1) a screenshot of NettieWIP on the NaNoWriMo website, showing 203% of a goal completed (60,819 out of 30,000 words) and every challenge badge earned except the daily par badge because I chaotically wrote 5,000 words some days and 50 others; and (2) screenshot from NettieWIP showing the words "the end" in all caps on page 277. end ID.

It's a bittersweet first draft. I feel triumphant, because I haven't finished a first draft of anything since GroundskeeperWIP (2021) and I've been afraid all the bouncing between projects I've done since then simply means I've forgotten how to draft. I feel sad, because this is the end of an era for me - after my post-Camp tag tomorrow to cheer the completion of Camp NaNo, I'm nuking all my tweets and replacing them with a pinned tweet letting people know where else they can find me.

(In six months or so, I'll nuke my entire Twitter account.)

And I feel a little >:[ because this first draft is getting shelved. At least for a while. It did what it was supposed to: gave me the confidence to finish a first draft by showing me I CAN finish a first draft after all this time. Plus it felt good to fast-draft something for the first time in forever. (Cue Frozen.) But I don't really know how to write a mystery - in fact, I always said I'd never write a mystery, but then Nettie showed up and demanded otherwise - and this draft needs revision currently beyond my ken. I know some things that need to happen when I revise, but overall I'm still like "how does one solve a mystery??"

For now, I'm going to take a short writing break. Read a bit, rewatch Good Omens S2, watch OMitB S3, maybe do some art, etc. Not get sucked into a new social media platform even though I'm nuking Twitter. And then, when I'm ready, I'll get back to drafting FakeDeathgagement, or maybe ForestVibesWIP, if I have enough of it figured out by then.

Thanks for everything, Nettie my love <3