Camp NaNoWriMo: July 2015

Camp NaNoWriMo sneaked up on me this time around. Honestly, I’m not sure I would have remembered at all if one of my April cabin mates had not emailed me about putting together another cabin for July. Luckily, she did, and I have signed up for the challenge.

For July, I am setting a much lower (though still challenging) word count goal of 30,000 words (as opposed to 75,000 in April). I’ve found that I can write 1,000 words a day pretty comfortably, but it will still be a stretch given our Independence Day weekend vacation plans and the fact that Daniel and I are moving on August 1st. I will be continuing the first draft of the sequel to The Cogsmith’s Daughter (Desertera #1), creatively-titled Desertera #2 at this stage. Of course, I cannot tell you anything about it without ruining most (if not all) of The Cogsmith’s Daughter.

Now, as you may or may not remember (hopefully not), my Camp NaNoWriMo in April was not very successful. Based on this experience, I wanted to share my top five lessons from April so that you all do not repeat my mistakes.

1) Be realistic with your goal. Take into consideration the scope of your project and the non-writing demands in your life. You can always raise/lower your goal during the first two weeks of the event.

2) Be active in your cabin. Having a group of writers around to support you is a great resource. Cheer them on, and let them do the same for you. Share successes and failures, and use theirs to encourage yourself.

3) Don’t worry about other projects. I “lost” Camp NaNoWriMo in April, because I abandoned my draft upon getting the content revision feedback for The Cogsmith’s Daughter. However, I didn’t really start revisions until May anyway. If you can help it, stay focused on your Camp project for the entire month. Unless you have a huge deadline (in which case you probably shouldn’t be doing Camp anyway), other projects can wait.

4) Try new writing techniques. Camp NaNoWriMo is the perfect time to experiment. In April, I found that I actually could write in small chunks of time and that I did not have to end each writing session with the end of a scene/chapter. Breaking these old habits has helped me immensely in my everyday writing.

5) Don’t take it too seriously. The whole point of Camp NaNoWriMo is to have fun. If you go stressing yourself out over your goals, that is even worse than losing or not participating at all.

Now, before I end this scatter-brained post, I need a little help from you all. During April’s Camp, I had Baby Groot as my writing mascot. The question is: should I keep Baby Groot or introduce a new mascot? Vote below!