NOT YOUR USUAL SUSPECTS

A group blog featuring an international array of killer mystery, suspense, and romantic suspense writers. With premises and story lines different from your run-of-the-mill whodunits, we tend to write outside the box. We blog several times a week on all topics relating to romantic suspense and mystery, our writing, and our readers. We welcome all comments and often have guest bloggers. All our authors can be contacted separately, too, using their own social media links.

We find our genre delightfully, dangerously, and deliciously exciting - join us here, if you do too!

NOTE: the blog is currently dormant but please enjoy the posts we're keeping online.


Julie Moffet . Cathy Perkins . Jean Harrington . Daryl Anderson . Nico Rosso . Maureen A Miller . Sandy Parks . Lisa Q Mathews . Sharon Calvin . Lynne Connolly . Janis Patterson . Vanessa Keir . Tonya Kappes . Julie Rowe . Joni M Fisher . Leslie Langtry

Friday, July 14, 2017

This Summer, At Writers Camp...



My first week at writers boot camp—cleverly disguised as an idyllic online summer camp, with cabins and marshmallows and even a lake—started off with a bang. But now, as I find myself thousands of words behind on my new manuscript at the end of Week Two, it’s turned into something more like a whimper. But I’m not discouraged. No sirree Bob!

For those who may not be familiar with Camp NaNoWriMo, it’s a one-month virtual writers marathon held each April and July. It’s related to the larger annual National Novel Writing Month in November, where you have thirty days to write 50,000 words. (That’s 1666 per day—notice anything ominous about those last three digits?) In the camp version, you can set your own goals, but I thought it would be inspiring to go for a midsummer Five-Oh-Thousand. Was that a mistake? Well, maybe. But when the writing gets tough, the tough get going, right? (Answer: Yes. Straight to the fridge for an ice cream break.)

Every night after Taps (you just hum it to yourself), campers post their word counts for the day. And unless you specified a preference for a private cabin, you’re sharing a bunkhouse with up to 19 other writers. Cabinmates share cheers and group sprints and write-ins—and there’s always plenty of encouragement for those campers who have a little (ahem) trouble getting started…or keeping up the furious pace.

Camp NaNoWriMo isn’t supposed to be stressful, of course. It’s fun as well as productive. In addition to picking your own word count, you can set your own writing schedule. You can write at the crack of dawn (nooo, thank you, rooster fans) or anytime until the stroke of midnight.  Some days, between my day job and procrastinating in just about whatever way I can think of, I don’t sit down to the keyboard until almost 11 pm. So I have to fudge the cut-off time just a teensy bit and write til the wee hours of the next morning. My cabinmates agreed that wasn’t cheating, really. The first day I only got in a thousand words—just 666 short. Hmm…


(via Giphy)

Luckily, the word count is cumulative, so you can write however many words you want each day. And by the time July 31st rolls around (it comes up fast, trust me), you have a pretty decent chunk of a brand new, spanking manuscript. You might need to collapse and take the month of August off, of course, but at least you’ll have bragging rights.

There’s another incentive, too: In addition to nifty badges you can earn (yep, former Girl Scout here), there’s a little target graphic with an arrow that moves closer and closer toward the bullseye to show your outstanding progress. As it happens, my favorite activity at actual summer camp (next to reading my way through the Nancy Drew library) was Archery. I’m not Katniss from the Hunger Games or actress/Olympian Geena Davis, but I might work a quiver full of arrows into a murder mystery sometime. That’s me on the far right.



So now it’s Week Three—time to glom myself to the keyboard and attempt to catch up on that elusive word count. The important thing is DON’T EVER GIVE UP!!!! Today my cabinmates and I are going to try to pound out as many words as the fastest writer in camp. If all else fails, we may just short sheet her bed.


(via Giphy)

Anyone else out there at writers camp this summer? Let us know—or share your favorite camp memory!

5 comments:

jean harrington said...

Lisa, I loved this post. 1000 words in the middle of the night? Awesome. I'm so impressed. And too chicken to go camping.

Sandy Parks said...

Yeah, I'd probably have to resort to short sheeting her (super writer's) bed. Don't think I can keep up with some of the sprint writers out there. I do think focusing on word count for the month would be a huge help. I may have to bite the bullet someday and sign up for "camp." Thanks for the story!!

Julie Moffett said...

I seem to be at writer's camp every freaking single day! Lol!! Great post and an excellent way to keep yourself accountable for word count!

LIsa Q. Mathews said...

Thanks for the kind words and encouragement, guys! I wrote this morning. Just over 666 words, ha. Well, every word counts, right? Sort of. The idea is to make daily writing a habit. That time of day you look forward to more than any other. Working on that! :-)

Nico Rosso said...

That is some badass accountability, Lisa. I love how using the camp vocabulary makes it seem more like a fun adventure than a grind.

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