Script Frenzy

    I found out yesterday that Script Frenzy, bot the youth and the adult versions, would no longer exist. I was rather sad and disappointed. I had used the youth version of Script Frenzy to write my first play ever, mostly because I thought it was cool and I love writing (but also because I got bragging rights and a printable certificate). My play was only thirty-eight and a half pages of writing, but it was fun. I learned a lot more about writing plays, and I did have some good quotes from my script. I also really liked the inspirational pep talks that the YWP (Young Writers' Program) director gave us, especially as I was doing it on my own, without my peers' support. It also made me appreciate plays and play-writes a lot more, just as Camp NaNo has helped me appreciate real, published books and the authors who are able to do so. As a result, I don't look at plays -or novels- the same way again, without imagining all of the back-story and work that is put into them.  I was kind of sad that I only got to do Script Frenzy for one year, because I had wanted to do it again, but I've mostly gotten over it. However, they (at the Office of Letters and Light) doing more to support NaNo, to make "year-round content", so that should be good. I think I will do NaNo this year, and I'm already excited -and nervous-! Let's just say I will binge on chocolate for 30 days straight; it's kinder that way.

Noveling

          This month, I'm embarking (and have been embarking) on a month-long quest to write a 50,000-word novel, through Camp NaNo. This is the first time that I have written a novel, and I'm excited. My novel is about a girl named Alyssa Taylor, who moves to Columbus, Ohio because of her mother's new job. She meets several new classmates, and they begin working on the Newspaper Project. As it slowly unravels, she quickly finds out that life is more complex than it may seem. It is a literary novel, meaning that it currently has little-to-no plot and dialogue, but I have got the characters down. I'm trying to give it more dialogue, and I have more of a plot now, so that's good. As I have experienced 27 days thus far of crazy noveling, character-building, and reading blogs about noveling, I have wisdom to share with you. 
Prepare to be enlightened.

     What I have learned from Camp NaNo*:
- I procrastinate badly
- use whatever you've got
- don't discriminate against bad ideas
- being an author is way harder than it seems
- you should stock up on cookies and other sugar-filled objects
- Write or Die is the way to go
- it’s way harder to be consistently witty in a book than in real life

* It would be cool if that made an acronym about writing, but it doesn’t, unless IUDBYWI is some type of analyzing device


                                        The Plan for my Novel

     After I finish my novel in the next few days (well, technically, the first draft), then I will edit it like crazy and remove a lot of the monologues which I have inserted solely for their word-usage. I’m not looking forward to that, but I will do that. Once I don’t cringe at the thought of other people reading my heartfelt opus, then I may give it to some of my friends as beta readers, so they would give me feedback (not that I’ve found anyone for that job [who agreed to it], yet). After getting their feedback, if they give me feedback, I will ignore about half of it, because I don’t like constructive criticism. I will act sullen and mope about the house, thinking about how they ‘obviously didn’t understand what I meant by that phrase’ (or something to that effect), for several days, and then I might consider their feedback. I will make some of those changes, and then I will go over my story again, making my changes as needed. After I’m completely satisfied with that, I will look into Kindle Direct Publishing, and try to publish it for free as a Kindle book this summer, because I simply love strangers harshly judging my writing (yes, you’re right; I could stop writing stuff and putting it on the internet for others to judge mercilessly, but that would take all of the pain out of it, and who really wants that? That’s right, nobody).