Camp NaNoWriMo!

May and June snuck up on me. I am pretty sure they were in cahoots. Plotting all throughout April to ambush me and catch me unawares. Before I realized it, July was here. And boy, did July drag.

While May and June flew by with the speed of a thousand irate wasps, July has plodded along, kind of moping, really, like an uninvited guest that has overstayed its welcome, that cannot just take the hint and seriously you need to leave before I throw you out of MY HOUSE. Ahem.

August comes as a bit of a relief. August, I think, will be An Improvement.

One reason is the very title of this entry: Camp NaNoWriMo. The very title makes me want to parody the theme song from that old Nickelodeon show, Salute Your Shorts. (Y'know... "Camp Annawanna, we hold you in our hearts, and when we think about you...")

Camp NaNoWriMo is basically NaNoWriMo in the summer. Rather than having to wait all the way til November to recklessly go where few novelists have gone before, though, you can pick the summer month of your choice - June or August (or both) - and use your novel as an excuse for not having more of a tan and avoiding the life-threatening rays of the sun during these sweltering times.

I tried to do Camp NaNoWriMo last year but failed kind of miserably. I had a major surgery a couple days into it and never quite recovered the word count (though my health recovered quite nicely, it just took longer than expected). I've successfully defeated NaNoWriMo: The November Version on a few different occasions, including with the book that I'm currently editing to publish by the end of the summer, which I wrote during my first NaNoWriMo back in 2007. I'm hoping lightning will strike a second time as I plan to write the sequel over the next 31 days.

If you're interested in taking on the challenge yourself, hop on over to the Camp NaNoWriMo website to sign up. You'll get assigned a cabin, which will be your support group for the month, and the tools to track your noveling progress. The goal is the same as traditional NaNoWriMo: write a 50,000 word novel in the span of one month. In August, which is a 31-day month, that equals 1,613 words per day, which is roughly two and a half pages, depending on font/font size. This entry is currently about 400 words at this point. And now it's more. And more. And more. And more. And...

Anyways. 

Are you doing Camp NaNoWriMo this year?