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Camp Nanowrimo

While I wait with baited breath to find out whether I made it to the third round of the 2014 Amazon.com Breakthrough Novel Award Contest, I'm participating in Camp Nanowrimo and finishing “Caged Dreams” – the third romantic suspense novel in my “Dreams” series featuring the Brooks family.

Camp Nanowrimo is an offshoot of National November Writing Month (“Nanowrimo”) – a writing event that takes place every November where writers all over the world sign up on a website (www.nanowrimo.org) and vow to write a 50,000 word novel between November 1st and November 30th. For Nanowrimo, it must be a new novel – not a continuation or a rewrite of an existing one. The idea is to furiously whip out a first draft and not have enough time for that dreaded inner editor to kick in. Writers have the opportunity to meet up with fellow writers in cafes or libraries or wherever and keep track of their word counts by updating their pages on the Nanowrimo website. When a writer hits 50,000 words, they “win.” They don't get a medal or prize money; instead, they get the satisfaction of having completed or being well on the way to completing a first draft of their novel.

Camp Nanowrimo, which takes place in April and July, is a more relaxed version of Nanowrimo. Instead of being stuck at 50,000 words, you can set your own word count goals for Camp Nanowrimo – anywhere between 10,000 and 1,000,000. You can work on an existing project or do different types of writing projects (short story collections, autobiographies, textbooks, etc.).

In keeping with the camp theme, writers are divided into cabins and grouped with 11 other cabin mates. My cabin mates are all women, with ages ranging from 16-51, writing in several different genres. Only one of us so far is anywhere near where her word count should be at this stage. Unfortunately, it's not me. 🙂

I'm going to stop procrastinating now, get back to writing and up my word count. On Saturday, there will be an eight hour writing marathon. I intend to participate and see if I can't make up for some lost time. I'll let you know how it goes.

Peace