Camp ended last night at midnight. Organizers describe Camp NaNoWriMo as “An Idyllic Writers’ Retreat, Smack-Dab in the Middle of Your Crazy Life.” I met the camp goal I set for April which was editing everyday and that makes me a winner! Everyone who meets his or her goal is considered a winner.

This time, the actual work was a little less onerous because the goal was readily achievable. I could do it while living my everyday life. When I was writing 50,000 words last November during National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), writing became my life.

My next goal is to prepare for a new adventure: Revise Your Novel in 31 Days. The program was created by Janice Hardy as part of her Fiction University, a great web resource for writers.

She created the program for the month of March, but I didn’t learn of it until later in April. That’s OK; I wasn’t ready for it in March. In fact, I’m not ready yet. My goal is to start in mid-July.

The program is designed for novels that are farther along than mine. Fortunately, it will be available until the end of the year. I checked.

Odd, isn’t it? I have a lot of work to do to get my story to the point where I can consider a program to revise it? But I get it.

I read that if I finished 50,000 words during NaNoWriMo, I probably wouldn’t even have a first draft for a novel; I’d have a zero draft. Maybe that would be less true for an experienced writer, but it was absolutely the case for me. I want my novel to be 80,000 to 100,000 words. But I don’t need to just add more words; I need to add more story, to craft my zero draft into something other people (besides my mother) will want to read.

My next checkpoint is July 13.

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