I signed up for Camp NaNoWriMo – a ‘virtual writing retreat’ affiliated with the real National Novel Writing Month in November. Camp sessions are hosted in April and July and seem to be a little less ‘structured’ than the real NaNoWriMo – openly welcoming drafts of new novels, revisions, poetry, scripts, and short stories. You also set your own word count goal – as opposed to the 50.000 word target of NaNoWriMo. (Or, if you prefer, Camp NaNoWriMo also allows you to set your goal in terms of lines, pages, or hours logged.)
I’ve never officially signed up for NaNoWriMo before – not wanting to upload my writing – no matter how ‘scrambled’ I try to make it. (And, if I’m being honest, I have no intention of uploading my current project to the website in order for my word count to be verified. – I’m just playing along for the satisfaction of updating my word count throughout the day.)
I have unofficially tried to write 50,000 words on my own in various Novembers, but have never been successful. So, when I was invited to participate in Camp NaNoWriMo, I liked that revisions were welcome since that’s more in-line with where I am at the moment. And, since I had the freedom to specify my own goal – I arrived at the somewhat random goal of wanting to hit 61,000 words in April.
I ended March at just over 42,000 words, so that averages out to be about 630 words/day -an attainable goal that doesn’t doom me to failure if I take a day off.
At any rate, I’m in a “cabin” with a group of quasi-local people – which basically just means we share a small online message board. Camp NaNoWriMo sends out daily “care packages” via email – which amount to some words of wisdom/motivation.
All in all, I like it so far. And, I’ll likely play along again in July.
Current Word Count: 47,899