a letter from camp

Mid-March, 2023
KDWC – Writer’s Woodland
(A.K.A. my laptop 😉 )

Dear readers,

Howdy y’all!

It’s been a while since I’ve posted. I wasn’t planning on taking a break… 🫣 I apologize. 

A lot has been happening in my life and I’d like to share a little bit of it with y’all!

school

I’m pushing for graduation by the end of this year! 🎉My focus is on the subjects that my state requires me to learn. While writing time might shrink, I hope to be prepared blog-post-wise. 🙂 

My struggle has been with science (biology and anatomy). What has made studying science easier for you?  I’m dealing with a textbook and formatted notebook (the Cornell method, I believe?) for biology, but I can’t seem to follow the method. I’m experimenting constantly with ways to use the blocks. 😛 

I’ve discovered a motivating schedule that could bring me to the end of Biology sooner than I expected! By God’s grace, school will get done in His timing. 🥰

Also, I hope to be walking, reading, and playing tennis more! 🎾Writing is nice as a hobby-job, but I probably should have more than one hobby. Especially reading. 😅

writing

The King’s Daughters’ Writing Camp (KDWC/Camp) opened March 1st! 

If you don’t know what KDWC is, let me explain. Directed by Rebekah A. Morris, it’s a virtual writing camp hosted on Slack a few times a year for Christian girls. If you’re a girl looking for a motivating and a safe place to fellowship, this is the place! 

The best thing about KDWC: the focus on glorifying Christ, the motivation, the edifying conversations, the friendship, and the adventures. And I really like that the admins have divided up the girls into “tents” (private channels for only a few girls and a couple of Camp Counselors–called Aunties 🙂 ). That way, if the girls in the public channels get rowdy, you have a place to interact with fewer people. Of course, some tents are crazier than others, so the level of calm/crazy varies from tent to tent. 🙂 

Of course, there are rules for the purpose of emotional and spiritual safety. You can find all of their rules on their site. 🙂 

While I love adventures and excitement, I’m actually happy that this Camp is a lot quieter than usual. March seems to be a busy time for all of us campers, so it’s easier to step away and not worry about missing out on things. And this season of my life is… different, so quiet is nice. 🙂 

Are you at KDWC? I’d love to know! Send me a DM and/or, if you’re comfortable with doing so, please leave a comment about KDWC down below! ❤ I’m sure you’ve done an amazing job of writing at Camp! What’s your favorite part of it? Can you tell me about one of your projects? How much progress have you made? 😀 I’d love to hear from you! 🤗

I shall now actually update you on my writing progress. 😜 I’ve made almost 30,000 words in progress. 😮 That’s 15,000 over my official starting goal, and just a few thousand away from my unofficial goal. I know that wouldn’t have been possible without God’s grace and the tent and tent-mates that He blessed me with! 🥰 

Now, to be honest, I haven’t stuck to my list of projects. (I count just about anything written for stories/blog posts for my goal, though.) I have made significant progress in a patriotic contemporary short story, a new Fall story (that I’m actually supposed to be done with to reward my tent for reaching 100% of our collective goal), and a fan-fiction for my sister. Also, I’ve started writing a couple of writing crawls. That’s been so much fun. 😁 (I’ll give you a little list of my stories and what they’re about in a bit, if you want to know more. 🙂 )

I’m really having a hard time getting into 3 of my projects. Got any tips on refreshing motivation for old stories? What do you do to make yourself prioritize certain projects? I think if I sit down and force myself to write only in those specific ones, something will come. I just… don’t want to sit down and not write for a while. 🤦🏻‍♀️I have been getting some accountability by doing writing crawls, writing sprints, and not getting on electronics before I do some not-so-pleasant tasks. (And if you have any ideas for them if you read my project list, please contact me over here or DM me on KDWC! I’d love to hear from you and get some fresh ideas. 😁 They’ll be the last 3 on the list. 🙂 )

Accomplishment wise, I’ve completed 2 pieces so far: a short story about a boy and a fish, and a poem about the rain. I’ve edited/typed up/rewritten a couple of blog posts, too! 

For the rest of the month I’d like to focus on completing my Fall story, a Christmas story, and my Independence Day story. Ambitious? Yes. A certain tent-mate is rubbing off on me. 😇 I’m really hoping to build a stash of scheduled posts, as well. 

my KDWC projects

Hopefully you’ll find this interesting. If you don’t, feel free to skip it. 😄 I’ll try to keep each description short though. If you’d like to know more, please ask in the comments! ❤ I’d love to know which one you’d be most interested in reading. 😀 As a note, all projects except for the writing crawls are fiction. 🙂

• What They Gave – a contemporary short story about a young man’s journey to understand his family’s history with the military and his fight with bitterness towards God for letting his family fall into great trials. I hope to submit this to Abigail Kay Harris’ next anthology, Seize the Fight. 
• Of Pumpkins and Motorcycles – a contemporary short story about a girl’s broken relationship with her brother. It’s set in a small town for that cozy Hallmark feel, but it doesn’t have the romance! 😀 
• Cordially, ShortHand – a contemporary fan-fiction short story based off of the 2019 Carmen Sandiego show. It’s about a V.I.L.E. operative in hiding, and her meeting with another “well-known” operative. 
• Writing Crawls – special to-do lists that follow a theme (story, animal, activity, book/movie, etc.) that give you writing goals for almost every step of the story. 
• Love Thy Neighbor – a historical short story set in 1776, right after the Declaration of Independence has been signed, about a man that is personally debating whether fighting in a war is biblical or not. Can he really love his enemy and point a gun at him? (I also hope to submit this to the Seize the Fight anthology. 🙂 )
• Bells of Beginnings – a contemporary Christmas novelette (it was supposed to be a short story…) about a woman who comes to realize that satisfaction won’t–can’t–come from wealth and ease, but rather from the One who loves her the most. It’s one of the few stories that I’ve set in a big, city-feeling city. 
• Steve’s Story (it will get a better title… I hope) – a genre-less (alternate history, historical fantasy, steampunk-but-not-steampunk) novel about a teenager and his struggle with the Mafia. When his world is turned upside-down, Steve makes new allies to save his dad. Things don’t always go as planned, though. 

my questions for you

Now I have something of great importance that I’d like to ask you. It’ll take a bit to explain…

I’m trying to put together a challenge/tag. 

What does that mean?

It will be much like the Get To Know Your Character Tag (created by Anna from Anna’s Idea Blog) that I did recently. 

It will be a character interview tag, since I enjoyed Anna’s so much! But, I’m hoping it will contain deeper questions. Questions that I hope could possibly spark inspiration for stronger characters. 

How will it be a tag/challenge, though?

The ‘tag” part will work similar to normal blog tags: at the end of a post, you tag however many people the rules say. The rules will specify what kind of people to tag. 

The “challenge” is to build an entire blog series or file for characters by doing this interview with each of your characters. 

I’m hoping this will help writers develop their characters and fill a reference file of strong characters or give them a template and fun way to share about their writing.

Here are my questions:

• What questions would you ask your favorite characters?
• What would you like to know about your favorite characters?
• What would you like to know about any character?
• What would you like to know about my characters?

I need your help to make this challenge/tag something you’d like to read or participate in. ❤ 🙂

I’d like to note that, while I asked about your favorite characters, I would appreciate it if you could generalize the questions as much as possible before you submit them. I’m sure that I haven’t read every book you have, which means I probably won’t know who/what you’re talking about if you send me a super specific question about a character’s background or personality. 

I don’t mind rewording or tweaking questions if they can be, though. Also,  I do reserve the right to not include every question you may suggest. 🙂

And if you’d like to keep updated on my writing, the projects I mentioned above, or this tag/challenge idea, please consider subscribing. You’ll get posts sent right to your email!

It’s time that I wrap up this letter. Thanks so much for reading! I hope you have a gorgeous week and another great week of writing, if that’s what you do! 😀

With love, plot bunnies, and sleep deprivation,