Your daily Camp Care Package is brought to you in partnership with We Need Diverse Books. Author Maurene Goo brings us this week's Camp Care Packages:

For me, my characters come to me before the story does. When I try too hard to focus on the what, I get stymied and discouraged pretty quickly. So I’ve discovered that when I start free-form writing in my character’s voice, the story starts coming to me.

This may not work for everyone, but this has been a really helpful exercise for me in the beginning, when things are still no-pressure and all about the mere starting of writing. It’s not always busy work either—both my published novels kept very similar beginnings because that’s where my characters’ voices were born.

Have you tried writing from your character's voice? Share your thoughts with Maurene, or thank her for today's #CampCarePackage!

Camp Goings-On

• Join our first July Virtual Write In. NaNo Interns Maddi and Emily will be leading weekly Virtual Write-Ins all this month. Join the first VWI of July tomorrow, Wednesday, July 5, at 1:00 pm PDT.
• Participate in a Tweet Chat with Maurene and our other Camp Counselors! Follow the #CampNaNoAdvice tag on Twitter tomorrow, Wednesday, July 5, at 10:00 am PDT to ask our Counselors your writing questions.

Today's Writing Challenge

Set a timer and free-form write from one of your character's perspectives. Try to really get inside their head—what do they want, what ticks them off, what do they feel passionate about? Are they writing in a diary, telling a story to a friend, or dictating a formal letter?

Maurene Goo grew up in a Los Angeles suburb surrounded by floral wallpaper and piles of books. She is the author of Since You Asked… and I Believe in a Thing Called Love and has very strong feelings about tacos and houseplants. You can find her in Los Angeles with her husband and two cats—one weird, one even more weird.