Camp NaNo: Creative Struggles
July was supposed to be a Camp NaNoWriMo for me, but I’ve really been dropping the ball on writing this month. I set a goal of 15K words (which is super low for me) to get some writing started on Shadows of Zot. I kicked around a few chapters earlier this month, but due to work stress and just feeling low in creativity, I didn’t get much else done.
So here I am staring down the barrel of the final week of the only NaNo event that I’ve signed up for that I may not complete. This is not like me. I’ve had a lot of creative struggles lately, which I put into words in a post not too long ago. I hoped that writing something “on rails” like Zot would help me flex that fiction muscle that seems to be having so much trouble. I didn’t expect 15K to feel really impossible. Part of me doesn’t want to fail.
Then something funky happened. I had a dream. The best way to describe the dream is some kind of modern day urban fantasy, and it was really neat. Sometimes I think we see so much fantasy and sci-fi that we forget the wonder we used to feel for the genres… but this dream felt really awesome since it was almost like I was there as it was happening. When I woke up, I felt a little inspired and I said to myself, “Wish I could write a story that could capture something that felt that amazing.”
Then, yesterday I was kicking around on YouTube and a video reminded me that I have a rather neglected Crunchyroll account. So I looked through my massive queue there to see if anything caught my attention, and I ran across the anime Erased. I haven’t watched anime in a while, but I heard this was good (no spoilers), so I started watching it.
It was just what I needed to see to kick-start some stories in my head, especially since the anime has a lot to do with children… and Zot also has main characters who are children at this point. I’ve only watched two episodes of Erased, but I’m looking forward to watching more as I’m super interested in this story.
Anyhow, a blend of these two influences somehow helped me break the writer’s block that was dragging me down. I have a lot to do if I want to catch up with where I need to be to finish my word count by Sunday. It’s a reality, though, thanks to the 5K words I managed to write today.
Let’s see if I can make it! Even if I can’t, I’ve at least written a number of new chapters for Zot that I can post. So that’s a good thing.
