So far, all of my novels have been NaNoWriMo or Camp Nano projects. The healthy competition, the camaraderie, the deadlines, and the achievable daily goals create my perfect writing environment that I haven’t been able to replicate other months of the year. I take that back, I haven’t actually “won” at Camp yet, but then again I haven’t “lost” at NaNoWriMo in November yet either. So I guess I only have my stuff together in November. But Nano, I just can’t quit you, so I keep trying to succeed at Camp in April and July.
The great thing about Camp Nano is that you set your own goals, whether it’s how much you want to write (words, pages, or lines) or for how long you want to write (minutes or hours) in the course of a month. You’d think that’d make it easier to win for me…
This April, I’m setting my goal at 25,000 words to get started on the first draft of my next Jane Austen retelling. My plan is to have three books written, in some draft form at least, before I release the first one. As I’ve mentioned before, the first book is the story of Emma. This next one will be Pride and Prejudice, and finally Persuasion with overlapping characters in each book.
Speaking of Jane Austen, if you’re in the mood for something goofy, I started an Instagram account with colorfully rendered Austen characters and quotes.
Read on for an excerpt from the first book introducing “Mr. Darcy” and “Elizabeth Bennet,” who will be (unless I change my mind) club manager Mike and Dominican-Canadian bartender Sharnita in this story.
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