Where March went

So, it's this funny thing. March is gone and I have nothing to show for it. I didn't write much; I didn't read much; I basically didn't blog at all. All I have to show for the month of March are a couple of kids who were fed, clothed, and entertained reasonably well, and who only sustained minor injuries during that time. Oh, and Easter candy. Lots of Easter candy.

In April I'm doing camp NaNoWriMo with a very modest goal (10,000 words). So far I've done pretty well with that goal--I'm just a little bit ahead of where I need to be to finish my 10,000 words in one month. It's not entirely true that I didn't write in March. I finished one chapter (badly, but 2000 words, so not nothing) and I did a bit of outlining. Really, I did quite a bit of outlining.

I'm a discovery writer. I almost never start with an idea of where I want to end up; I start with an idea I think is cool and see where it takes me. Unfortunately, usually I just write around in circles. I'm attempting to get around that by listening to the advice of other writers and figuring out my ending and then what I need my characters to do/have happen to them to get to that point. It's a bit like figuring out a puzzle. I find I do enjoy the thought process, though then meshing the outline with the writing is still a challenge.

You see, I have a hard time doing mean things to my characters. I decided to shove one of them off a cliff in February, and another couple just lived through a massacre, so it's not like I can't do mean things to them externally, but then figuring out what my characters are going to do in response and how that works into the outline...