It's known by a lot of writers out there that April is one of the months dedicated to a Camp NaNoWriMo--a more relaxed set-your-own-pace alternative to the traditional NaNoWriMo in November. I haven't been treating this month as very 'official'. Since I've already transferred my profile information to the new NaNoWriMo site, adding a project on the old Camp one wouldn't actually line up with the rest of my information and that would probably irk me a little more than it should. So I've been being very unofficial about it.
Which works well with my Every Mo a WriMo mindset! I started the year working on a side, fan project for a favorite band of mine, which is now finished and ready to go well before their concert at the end of May. Since working on that involved taking a break in my current first draft of my project TDoE, I tried to get back into that once it was done. Buttt... the flow wasn't happening. Which is relatively normal, of course!
So in order to keep the productivity going, I rolled back another gear to what I was working on before I started TDoE in November of last year, which was the second draft revisions of TCS. Both TCS and TDoE are fantasy novels that take place in the same world, so by working on one of them, I hoped to get back in the groove of the other.
So far, doing that has worked! I finished revisions of TCS in time to get it to a best friend and beta reader of mine while I was visiting her for another friend's bachelorette party and my very first Zine Festival. I'll talk more on that and the topic of zines in a separate post. But since getting back from that trip, I've been able to write two chapters of TDoE and slowly get back into the feel of that. It is very much a a first and rough draft that will certainly need a lot of work, but that is the whole point of them. First drafts are purely to get the story on paper. That is really their entire purpose. And I hope to get that part finished over Spring and Summer. I still have two manuscripts I wasn't able to get to in time in 2018 which was the Year of Polishing for me.
But those will be what I tackle next, all the while working on getting HaWA ready for release and plotting plans for my next first draft.
Writing work is never done, and that's exactly the way I like it.