If there is a great gift we have gotten in this internet age is the different kind of monthly challenges that some us can be a part of and sometimes fall of that wagon in a caring community. Things like Inktober (one drawing per day for the month October following a list of prompts), 30 Day Challenges of a variety of themes, Mer-May, Vlog-mas, and many others. Most of them are fun ways for creatives to maybe give themselves a bump of activity, or in the case of those of us with day jobs and other obstacles it provides a chance to maybe work on these projects that we can later on count at least as practice. NaNoWrimo, short for National Novel Writing Month, is one of the best known.
what is this nano thing?
Originally the challenge was simple. During the month of November you had to write 50K words of a novel. By the end you should have either a complete short novel or a good chunk of a longer one. The rules were simple: no editing until the end of November, you had to start a new work, and any outlining or prepping shouldn’t really count. The main end was just to write, “winning” was symbolic even if you did get more perks than those who participated but did not reach the word goal. And with a designated forum site, regional meet ups, and chat groups, it became a whole community activity.
Things have changed since the first NaNo on 1999. What was originally a group of organizers are now a non-profit organization, hosting activities and programs for young and old writers and well known Big 5 published novels among their winners. The rules have become more flexible allowing for writing in other styles, accepting re-writes, and more. Among those changes is Camp NaNo.
It’s not the same thing? Camp?
Yes and no? Camp NaNoWrimo started out as a freer version of the challenge. Run during spring and summer (thus the “camp”) the biggest difference is that you can set your own goals. People would change them and log pages, editing and re-writing, and other aspects. It became as big a part of the community as the original November challenge. As someone who has tried both NaNoWrimo and Camp NaNoWrimo several times, even if I haven’t won them, what personally is the best part of these challenges for me is the accountability.
The forums, the groups, the “cabins” in the camp, this all provided an added oomph to me wanting to get those writing goals in. Even if I didn’t reach the number I wanted the people involved in the challenge, like in many of the other of the challenges I mentioned at the start, are mostly about just getting more writing done when we can.
nanowrimo, accountability, and personal goals
Last November I made it a challenge more to actually writer every day even if I did not reach my 50K words. And this April I tried it again but as we all know, things were hard this year and lets just say my mind was not exactly in it. But now June is here and Camp NaNoWrimo July is on. So for this round I plan to add a second pseudo challenge, accountability. While I do keep that with the other people involved in the challenge I mostly keep it to myself when it comes to telling people out of it. Even among places where I talk about my writing, like this blog, I usually don’t mention it.
That’s why I decided to say here. An extra layer of accountability you could say. I plan on updating here where I am through the challenge and just some random musings mainly to record this for myself. Because I think that has always been the spirit of NaNoWrimo, those personal goals. So that’s what I want to focus on, welcome to Camp NaNoWrimo July 2020 everyone.
Featured Image from: Pikist
July is on….. You just inspired me. Let’s see what my challenge can be… – not writing related..