Camp NaNo April 2023: Prep work 2

As each day passes I’m getting to my desk closer and closer to that magical ten o’clock… I just haven’t made it there yet. First job of the day was more Camp NaNo prep (see below), which probably took less than a single pomodoro all together.

I quickly shared the gig list and rattled through the competitions (I was up to date on the comps).

Facebook threw me out twice yesterday. First it locked my account, saying there had been unusual activity and they wanted to check it was me, and when I went back in I was forced to change the password. Then a few hours later my account was restricted, apparently because I exceeded the amount of times I could do certain things… I’m completely baffled and can only assume there’s some kind of glitch at the moment. They recently rolled out changes on the mobile browser version and that’s not been right since, so I don’t know if it’s something to do with that. But I logged several faults and can only wait until they sort it out.

I *am* gradually deleting everything on my Facebook and restricting it anyway. I hate what they’ve done to the mobile browser version. It looks too much like the app and I already hated the app. So with that and the changes at Twitter, it looks like my online presence is slowly returning to just the blog.

Bring back MySpace, that’s what I say! (And who remembers how buggy that was?)

I did want to go back to the NaNo prep at some time during the day, but the proofreading was more pressing and I need that one off my desk if I want a clear run at NaNo. I usually do NaNo on weekdays, but as I’m doing this one in longhand, I might do some weekend work too. Plus, of course, we have a long weekend at the end of next week and I already know I can’t hand-write as many words per hour as I can type them. (Apx. 1,000 vs 2,000 words per hour respectively.)

Monkey Dust has a private party to play at tomorrow, so no weekend off for us this time. Hope you have a good one!

Camp NaNo

At the end of Wednesday I was toying with enrolling on a Save the Cat Writes a Novel course because I knew I could pay a monthly amount rather than an annual amount and still have access to all the other courses on the same site. Writing Mastery Academy is Jessica Brody’s teaching site, and Jessica Brody is the author of Save the Cat Writes a Novel. 

In the end, I just went for it. I’d been able to preview some of the courses and I have the book Save the Cat Writes a Novel – on Kindle and in paperback – but much of it was still going over my head. So I paid the first monthly amount and settled down for an hour or two, expecting it to be a waste of time (as I was already struggling with some of the concept having read the book twice).

But it wasn’t a waste of time at all.

The first few videos were to explain the course, how it worked and who it was for. And then she launched into the actual planning of a novel using the Save the Cat method. By the end of the evening I’d brainstormed the character and the first beat, and transferred both to the A5 workbook.

I could have carried on too, but didn’t want to risk information overload. So I started Thursday with a bit more than what I finished Wednesday with, and I earned myself a massive TICK against ‘The Fool: Planning’.

As soon as I was at my desk again, there were my books waiting for me. I have a bright yellow exercise book that contains details of all the online workshops I’ve been doing and any notes that appertain. And I have my A5 workbook as described in yesterday’s blog post. The computer went on and I went straight to my Save the Cat workshop.

Once I’d watched the video, learned about the next step (or beat), seen some examples, and had a bit of a brainstorm, I ended up with planning work for Beat 2 and the first three chapters in the bag. Beat 1 went in my Prologue for now. Beat 2 has gone into Chapters 1, 2 and 3.

At this point in the day I had:

• the main storyline, in black ink
• some notes on the antagonist in blue ink, and
• notes relating to the crime(s) in red ink.

I haven’t used the green pen yet, but I think that will be used for what Brody and Save the Cat call the B Story.

I spent less than an hour on this and while I did plan on revisiting it again later in the day, I decided to do more of the paid work instead in order to clear the deck for NaNo.

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