Camp NaNoWriMo

I woke up yesterday morning and decided, once and for all, that I’m going to participate in Camp NaNoWriMo in August. For those of you not of the writerly persuasion, regular NaNoWriMo is National Novel Writing Month. It occurs every November & is a challenge to write a 50,000-word novel in one month. You don’t get anything for “winning,” just a completed novel, which most of us writers would consider reward enough.

Camp NaNoWriMo occurs each June and August. It is the same challenge each month. The difference from regular NaNo is that less people participate in these & there is less support. I had intended to participate in June, but then that whole pesky move thing happened and, well, writing in general was kind of hard to do.

However, I’m ready for the August camp. In fact, I’m feeling pretty psyched about it. For Camp NaNo, I’m going to write a sequel to my last NaNo novel, The Necromancer’s Son. Last NaNo was a fantastic experience for me. I gather that this isn’t necessarily always the case; a lot of people don’t finish at all. I attribute my success to the fact that I wasn’t working at the time, don’t have children to take care of, and was part of an awesome writing group.

Despite the fact that I’m working now (albeit part time) and no longer have a writing group (sob), I’m going to try something different this time around. I’m going to try writing my NaNo novel while continuing to work on another novel.

I might be insane.

But I figure that there’s no time like the present. Currently, I have no social life because I can’t really afford one. We have absolutely zero disposable income, especially for the next two weeks. I’ve been sticking pretty close to home anyway. So instead of watching too much Olympics/Netflix and reading too much fan fiction (to my great shame), I can throw my energy into lots and lots of writing.

It’s an experiment. It might fail. I might burnout. This is one of those instances where it could hurt to try, but I’m going to try it anyway. I’ll let you know how it turns out.

That is, if I’m still able to form coherent thoughts at the end.