Names Are Hard

The July edition of Camp NaNoWriMo is coming up (in—plot twist—July) and I, of course, have started thinking about what project I want to do. My intention at the beginning of the year was to start brand new, short projects, as a break from toiling with my novel. But I haven't been doing a lot of toiling lately. In fact, the main thing I've been doing is fucking around. Every now and again I'll write down a thought that may or may not fit into the narrative somewhere. Things like, "Do vampires take fall damage?" and "How do we feel about accidental murder?"

So I think maybe I should use Camp NaNo as a kickstart to the actual novel writing, with the hope that daily word goals will get me going. The issue is that I was hoping to have a full outline before I started actually writing, for once. Which I do not yet have.

Make no mistake, I do have an outline. I have most of the major plot points on it. And I have an actual scene-by-scene outline for the first, oh, 30% of the plot. After that, it gets super fuzzy.

I could make it easy, and have everything happen in the same order it did in the rough draft. But there was a reason that was a rough draft. A lot of the time, those things didn't work, or they didn't make sense. So now I'm trying to fit them in where they'll be most effective. And for a lot of them, I'm not sure. So a character who was initially introduced in Scene 4 still hasn't been introduced by Scene 10, because I just don't know where to put them.

Basically, I'm trying to make Draft 2 perfect, which of course, it won't be, because that's not how any of this works. It's going to have it's own problems, which I'll have to fix in Draft 3. I just hope it has fewer problems.

So the goal is, I guess, to cobble together an outline between now and the first of July. And then get started with actual writing. Or hell, maybe I'll just sit down and write the first 30% that I have more or less figured out.

Except maybe I should give my damn town a name first. How hard could it be? (Hint: very hard)

Anyway, I'll see you next week. I've got things to figure out.