Camp NaNoWriMo: Week 2 Summary

It's pretty much halfway point in this year's Camp NaNoWriMo, so that should mean that I'm halfway through both my novel and my word count, right? Wrong. Despite trying to get ahead so that I have less writing to do at the end of the month, I've mostly been playing catch up this week. After a couple of days with less than 500 words, I only just got back on track yesterday. Here's how my word count graph is currently looking:

So, we've established that I'm not quite halfway through my word count yet... But what about my plot?

Unfortunately, that's even further from the halfway point. But that's to be expected. Back in 2012 when I first attempted this story, I got to 41,000 words before giving up - because I wasn't even halfway through the story (and I was busy). When I finally completed a draft in 2014, the total word count was about 85,000 words. So I'm neither surprised nor concerned that I'm only on the fifth of my planned twenty chapters at almost 23,000 words.

On the bright side, I am happy with this draft so far. Sure, I'm writing it thinking "I'll need to seriously edit this later", but I haven't had any doubts about this version of the plot, so this may be the last complete rewrite. That thought is a very nice one indeed.

Also, I made a Spotify playlist of songs that inspire me and help me build up the atmosphere specific to my story and setting. You can find it here.

Find me on Camp NaNoWriMo here, or find out more about NaNoWriMo and Camp NaNoWriMo here and here.

Happy writing!

Camp NaNoWriMo: Week 1 Summary

It's July! For me, this only means one thing: Camp NaNoWriMo. Being in the middle of my summer holiday and with no exams or deadlines looming, July is the perfect time for me to write. This July's Camp NaNo marks the fourth year I've been working on my novel, The Secrets The Dead Keep, and I'm really excited to be working on the second draft this month, after finishing the first draft during July 2014's event. Here's how it's going so far.

But first, for anyone who hasn't heard of NaNoWriMo (short for National Novel Writing Month, even though it's actually international... don't ask me, it wasn't my idea), it's a month-long online event which challenges participants to write 50,000 words within 30 days. The original NaNoWriMo is held in November, but a few years ago, the Office Of Letters And Light (the organisation responsible for the event) introduced Camp NaNoWriMo, which is held twice yearly - in April and July. For more information on NaNoWriMo, follow this link, and for more information on Camp NaNoWriMo, follow this link.

The first week of this July's Camp NaNo has been pretty good; so far, I've managed to stay pretty on-track. At this particular moment in time, I'm about 800 words ahead of my current target word count. I only missed the word count on one day, but I made up for my measly 500 words by writing 3,000 (!!!) the day after.

There are generally two strategies for completing: planning and 'pantsing' - i.e., whether or not you plot/outline your project beforehand, or whether you just start writing on the 1st of July and see what happens. Back in July 2014, when I finished my first draft, I planned. I planned out every single scene and... it felt like following Ikea instructions. The finished product was very functional (my mum loved it), but to me it lacked a certain something. It lacked that passion that was obvious in every line of the unfinished first attempt from way back in 2012's Camp NaNo.

This year I'm... neither planning nor 'pantsing'. That is to say, I made a plan more extensive than I did in 2014 (this one actually had an ending before the beginning of July; in 2014 I planned up to the middle of the story before I started writing, and then updated my plan when I actually thought of a suitable ending). But the difference is that this year I'm trying to look at my plan as little as possible. It gives me the confidence of knowing exactly where my story is going while simultaneously giving me the freedom and spontaneity of having absolutely no idea where it's going. It makes me feel creative even when I'm actually just ticking scenes off a checklist as I write them. It's bringing life back to my story and characters. At least, I hope it is!

The other thing that's making me more excited about this draft that the previous one is the plot changes. As I said, I only finished my 2014 scene-by-scene plan halfway through the month. This is because, despite having already been working on this novel for two years by this point, I had no idea how I was going to build up to my conclusion - or even what my conclusion was going to be. Eventually I found something that worked and slapped that in place. It was very obvious that it needed improvement. Plus, when you've been writing the same story for four years, you do need to keep it interesting for yourself. The changes I've made and the new aspects I've added mean I'm currently much happier with my plot. Let's just hope I'm still as happy with it once I've written it!

Find me (and my novel!) on Camp NaNoWriMo here.

Good luck to anyone else doing Camp NaNoWriMo this July! :)

Making Cheesecake (Student Style)

I’ve been unable to post much since Easter thanks to university obligations (apparently you actually have to study to get a degree), which is a shame because I’ve had two posts in my head waiting to be written since then; one about making Danish pastries, and one about the Creative Writing Society’s trip to Wales. But in the meantime, here’s one about making cheesecake with approximately half the equipment needed (and this recipe (and I’ll be writing as if you’ve read it)).

The first problem was that neither I nor my housemates own a rolling pin. The second problem was that we don’t own any scales. The third problem was that I very much doubted that the digestive biscuits I guessed to be about 250g would fit in one of our plastic food bags.

My first solution was to break the guessed quantity of biscuits up and sandwich them between two sheets of cling film and crush them with a flat dish. This didn’t go too well. The top layer of cling film kept sticking to the bottom of the dish and I didn’t use enough cling film so I still had to separate my broken biscuits into two halves to crush them. Plus, if I’d have carried on trying to crush the biscuits with the dish, it would have taken forever.

My second solution was to put the biscuits in the dish and use a tin can as a substitute rolling pin. This worked much better.

It was much easier to get the right amount of butter, thanks to the labelling on its packaging.

Melting the butter and making the base. The recipe suggests a round loose-bottomed tin and baking parchment, neither of which we had, so I used a rectangular tin and tin foil instead. I do not recommend using tin foil as it creases and tears very easily, which means your cheesecake will end up in odd shapes and will be very difficult to remove.

While the base was chilling in the fridge, I started on the filling. I had never seen a vanilla pod before! Also I forgot that, while we don’t own scales, we do actually own a measuring jug, so I ended up guessing the amount of cream.

Vanilla pods

WHAT A LOT OF SOFT CHEESE

Before and after mixing the filling:

Once the filling is spread on top of the base

In the end, I didn’t unmould the cheesecake as the recipe suggests, but instead topped it while still in the tin. Tesco didn’t have any strawberries when I went in for ingredients so I used raspberries instead. Rather than blending some of the raspberries and putting the rest on top, I blended all of them and then grated chocolate over it.

It’s been about two months since I made this recipe so it’s a little hard to remember the verdict. It was nice, although I would’ve preferred having more base compared to filling and strawberries probably would’ve been nicer than raspberries, which were slightly sour. Also I would definitely recommend having the right equipment – it would’ve been much easier!

Book Cover

Camp NaNoWriMo is around the corner so I thought I'd get ready by making a book cover for the project I'll be working on this summer!

It started off like this...

Then I added the bridges so that I didn't paint sea where they were supposed to be there, shaded the bridge and filled in light base colours for the sea and the city.

This is what it looked like when I'd finished painting the sea. Also note that I'd added the first harbour.

The city's beginning to take shape! I spent an entire afternoon painting tiny rooftops and even tinier windows and doors. If you think that sounds dull, you're right.

The finished painting!

Some details: the Central Clocktower, the Northern Harbour, and the bridges (Guard Bridge to the south, and an as yet unnamed bridge)

And finally - the finished product! It depicts the city that my story takes place in, Ivec Warra, which you may notice by the colour of the buildings and the bodies of water inside the city is inspired by Venice. It's not quite accurate to how I envision it but I'm by no means an accomplished artist so I'll forgive myself for that. Maybe one day when I've been painting longer I'll redo it, but for now I'm pretty happy with it.
I tweaked it a bit once I had it on my laptop, and then of course added the title and my name.

Find me - and my novel - on Camp NaNoWriMo here!

University Life, Part Two: The Cons

Previously, I've written about how great an experience university is (you can find that post here) - but that doesn't mean it's for everyone. Not everyone is cut out for studying. And good Lord, do you have to do a lot of studying.

Besides studying, university can be tough - in terms of organisation, mental health, and a whole load of other things. So here are all the things I've found that aren't so great about uni life.

Home-made Focaccia

Apart from pizza dough, I've never made bread before, but since I decided I wanted to cook more, I knew bread making was something I definitely wanted to try. Focaccia, an Italian bread made with olive oil, seemed exactly like the sort of bread I'd enjoy both making and eating. We used Paul Hollywood's recipe in How To Bake. It isn't too challenging, but with waiting for the bread to rise and prove, it takes over three hours of preparation, though it doesn't feel like that long. It's definitely worth it though!

It started off very similar to the pizza dough recipe, but with different amounts of the ingredients.

 Kneading the bread

Once the bread had risen

 Dividing the dough into two loaves

 Before and after proving for an hour

Before cooking

After cooking

We had hummous, vegan cheese and olives with feta with one of the loaves of focaccia as a starter. The vegan cheese went especially well with it, and (admittedly between seven of us) the whole lot disappeared within minutes.

Home-made Pizza

I've made pizza from scratch twice before but this is the first time I've used this particular recipe - from Paul Hollywood's Bread. I found it much easier and quicker to make the dough compared to the recipe I've used previously, and the resulting pizza was lovely. The two hardest things are kneading the dough and throwing it to shape it - I gave it a go but ended up just using a rolling pin! Apart from that, it's pretty easy and really tasty.

After kneading the dough, we let it rise for an hour, during which time it pretty much doubled in size. While the dough was rising, I made a sauce for the pizza topping using olive oil, tomato puree, water, garlic, basil and oregano.

Pizza toppings: mushrooms, red peppers, red onions, pepperoni and vegan cheese. Some of us also added Stilton!

 Aaand here are the final results! The pizzas take only ten minutes in the oven. The recipe was meant for three pizzas not four so ours were slightly small (not to mention funny-shaped!) but they were still pretty filling, especially with the salad. We reckon they were healthy too!

My pizza :)