I'm not entirely sure where the idea for this story came from, but I remember when I first had it. I was at work, shelving books in the library, listening to the Newsies soundtrack, which I did at least once a day. The weather was starting to improve, and I was feeling pretty cheerful. The winter had been long and awful, considering we'd had a blizzard on April 1st. Ught.

Shelving books doesn't actually require any higher brain functions, so long as one knows the alphabet and how to count to ten, which I do. So I always let my mind drift, and since I'd been working at the library, had come up with a significant number of story ideas, for fanfics and original works as well.

It started with a non-AU story idea, which was fairly hideous and never got written, but involved a female original character, something I very rarely was willing to write. I liked the character, but realized she was a bit too much of a modern day, bitchy feminist to fit into a regular story, so I began to play around with how to set up a modern day story. It seemed like "newsies in high school" had been done already, very well, but a few other people. And it's always kind of irked me that everyone either calls each other by nickname, because I've never seen a group of people who all have nicknames like that and always use them, or by real name, which I can never keep straight because the real names are up to the author.

Somehow, I made the mental leap to camp to solve that problem. The Girl Scout Camp I attended for years as a kid had councilors who all used camp names; it wouldn't be all that odd if campers did the same thing. So I could safely put the guys in a camp and have their names make sense, and I could put in my OC as well. She gave me one plot idea, but not the main one. (Feel free to guess who she is, by the way. It's not that hard.)

I have no idea how David became the focal point of the story in my mind, but as soon as I shifted from thinking about Blink as the main character to David, things began to fall into place. Much like in the movie, David has been thrown in to a group of wild personalities and doesn't know quite how to cope. While there are lots of subplots going on, the overarching plot would be about David maturing as a person and forming a few meaningful friendships, particularly one with Jack.

This was also a perfect way to get out all of my angsty!Jack urges, since I'd wanted to play around with Jack's backstory for awhile, but hadn't been able to come up with anything that wasn't a very typical "Poor baby's daddy was mean to him," story. Putting angsty!Jack into a modern day setting meant I could change that up a little, and the next thing I knew, I had scene after scene of ideas flowing through my brain.

Being the big dork I am, I went back to my room after work (if I remember right, instead of eating lunch or napping, which had been my plans) and sketched out the map quickly. I based it on the other camp I had been to, but made it co-ed instead of girls only. I jotted down a few ideas for what various campers would do and a few major events I already knew had to occur, and that night instead of sleeping or studying for my finals, wrote up the prologue and sent out the CC.

The story has grown a lot since then, though. Plots have changed and morphed, characters have taken on more definite and very different personalities, and the cast grew to epic proportions. I can't heavily feature all of the OCs, unfortunately, but a few of them gave me great ideas. As it is, I still occasionally get a flash of brilliance (or a flash of something, anyway) and have to figure out where to fit it in to the overarching plot.

As of the writing of this, the story is 59 pages long, and about an eighth of the way done, and still going strong. I love writing it, and I love all of the feedback I've gotten. Thanks to everyone who answered the CC, who reviews chapters on FFnet, and who enjoys it. Y'all rock. :)

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