Camp NaNoWriMo Wrap Up/A Few Updates

Todays post isn't anything exciting, but it will be in two parts. The first? Camp NaNoWriMo 2015.

For those of you who don't know, Camp NaNoWriMo is basically where you have to write fifty thousand words (or a target of your own choosing) in one month. I've won NaNo four times before--three for NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) which takes place in November, and once for Camp. It's basically a month filled with stress, tears, headaches and occasional nausea. Aside from that, I'd totally recommend giving it a go.

This year my goal was to write 50K and I achieved this on the 27th. *Does happy dance* The WIP I was working on is called The Kingdom of Empty Souls and is a YA high fantasy retelling of the Hades and Persephone myth, and even though my draft is currently at 58K (because I had some written before Camp NaNo started) I think I'm only about one third through the plot. If you want to know more about my WIP you should head over to my Pinterest board for it because, lets face it, I spend far more time pinning things than I actually do writing.

Basically, my story is a fucking behemoth.

Whilst I am really proud of myself, there were certain parts which were excruciatingly painful to write. I'm talking about stepping on lego kind of pain. It was like I was swimming through treacle instead of water. Even now I'm pretty certain that a lot of what I have written is a ton of crap. Saying that, I really do love the story I'm writing. It just feels right, you know?

Because I've spent a lot of time writing, I've definitely been stuck in a little bit of a reading slump. This happened last November where I wrote 100K in twenty nine days yet read a total of zero books. I also had exams that month and kind of 'forgot' to revise just so I could write. It's no secret that I'm the worlds worst student.

Even though what I've written isn't that great, it's already miles ahead of what I wrote in November. I think that this month was when I really, genuinely decided that I'm going to do everything I can to one day get published. Not now, not necessarily in five years, but I'm determined to see this dream through even if it kills me. I'll write so many crappy first drafts that one day they'll be slightly less crappy until they're actually kind of okay. It's going to take a lot of hard work, but I want this more than anything and I refuse to give up.

I don't know how much writing I'll get done in August because I'm going on holiday, bringing me onto part two of this post. I probably won't be blogging much whilst I'm away (for two weeks from Tuesday) as I'll only have my phone with me. I plan to schedule a few posts in advance, but if I actually write anything whilst I'm away it will probably be reviews.

I'm going to Florida to visit my American cousins, but we're also driving up to North Carolina for a few days so if anyone knows any good places to visit in the Lake Worth/Asheville areas please tell me in the comments! By good places to visit I mean good bookshops. Knowing me I'll probably buy an extortionate amount of books and will have to strategically sneak them into my sisters suitcase so my bag actually closes.

I don't know why but I have this weird thing where it's physically impossible for me to write a blog post without adding a GIF/image, so I'm going to end this post with a GIF of a cat. Sorry, not sorry.