Now the truth of the matter is that I am not actually packing for sleepover camp. Even when I went to camp as a child, I went to day camp so I got on a bus to and from. I am packing ideas for Camp NaNo. Now NaNoWriMo (aka National Novel Writing Month), I have done and won for six years. When I got my Winner's email and saw Camp NaNo, I signed up right away. I choose not to have bunkmates, and I am just absorbing life so on August 1 I can just go at it.
I have never believed in the idea of doing an outline. My mother's mother always said never plan because it was a surefire way to be disappointed. In my own experience, I have learned never to plan an itinerary for travelling. I am getting ready to leave the country and the only thing I have been preparing is how to recognize Celsius from Fahrenheit.
NaNo is always a trip, an excursion; and, it is to be enjoyed, which is why I absorb my life at the time, and the things and people around me influence me. The best way to write is to live.
Whether it be taking mental or actual photographs; reading; talking; writing. It's best when you take in the world around you. Your real experience makes the story, because it always allows you to be creative, to see life in a way you usually do not.
I just had a conversation with a woman who was very self involved but struck me as a character, and maybe she will manifest in my story. Coming from an erotic writing workshop with Rachel Kramer Bussel, gave me perspective and exercises I might want to expand upon; and, walking home from that with friends, I was telling a joke and that joke might be my first scene and get me writing in a genre I have never written before!
Ahhh, sitting in the garden of a cafe which I usually do not do, not soaking up the sun but the life around and in me...surrendering to summer NaNo...and looking forward to camp.
Photograph by F. Solomon
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