Come, Gather 'round the Camp (NaNo) Fire...
We're 12 days in. My word count sits at 14K+. I'm seeing clearly how I want the words to sit on the page, what I want the cover art to look like. I typically write contemporary fiction - basically telling a story. My novel text has a square formation on the page as do most. Paragraphs have the standard indent on the first line, then they're justified to fall from margin to margin. I don't like having words "break" at the end of a line so no hyphens are allowed (got that quirk from a department supervisor on a job - she was a stickler about that). I may play with sentence structure or punctuation (keeping in mind the flow for the reader), but overall the way the words show up on the page follows a typical format.
The book I'm working on for Camp this year though, is a collection of my "essays", blog posts, and such, that I've written over the last 13 years or so, all wrapped up in a loosely recognized autobiography. Not quite a memoir but definitely the story of my life thus far.
Because this is a representation of me in book format, I don't want it to look like a typical book. Spoiler alert ahead so if you want to be surprised when you get your copy, feel free to stop reading here. And I'll see you in the next one.
For the rest of you, here's the deal. There will be blank space - whole pages with just words listed down the page; those are words and phrases I want to draw a specific emphasis to as part of the narrative. My idea is that if you only read those particular pages, you'd get the gist of the whole story without much effort. There will be narrative pages that flow like a novel, then the essays and articles relevant to the time period will be sprinkled throughout.
My chapter titles are a graphic of my life's time line to date. There will be specific dates highlighted as a means to mark which chapter is which.
The cover? All white with a simple Times News Roman title across the front. That vision came to me this morning. I'm so excited.
Are you doing any writing at all while you're sheltering in place? Participating in Camp NaNo this month? Let me know in the comments.
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Until next time,