Camp NaNoWriMo

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As a person in the academic field, one of the busiest months we have is November. It is a month of papers, tests, and general craziness for teachers and students and anyone else involved in education. This is why I’ve always considered holding National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo for short) in November a seriously cruel joke. I mean, many students dream of writing a novel, and even more teachers feel they have a novel in them, so why torture them by putting NaNoWriMo in one the few months they can’t do it?

I personally think NaNoWriMo should become NaJulWriMo, or National July Writing Month. (Which sounds really Korean.) July is the one month that almost everyone has the time, in and out of education, to sit down and write a book. Well, although they’re unwilling to change the month so far (probably because the NaNoWriMo brand is too well established), the people behind NaNoWriMo are apparently aware of the issue. Their solution is called Camp NaNoWriMo, and this year it will be held in April (also not a great month for those in post-secondary education) and July (yay! teachers rejoice!)

Here`s how Wikiwrimo describes it:

Each month of Camp NaNo is its own separate event; participants can choose to participate in either session…or both. The default goal for each month is the same as regular Nano: 50,000 words. Previous participants of Nanowrimo and Script Frenzy can simply log in with their existing usernames and are automatically entered into the appropriate month upon creating a novel for the event. The rules are identical to regular NaNo, except you can choose any word count goal (between 10,000 and 999,999, inclusive), and may write either a novel or a script.

Another difference between regular NaNoWriMo and Camp NaNoWriMo is that while regular NaNoWriMo is structured around people doing their own thing with forums and meetups being optional possibilities, Camp NaNoWriMo is structured around what they call Cabins. Which WikiWriMo describes as follows:

A feature exclusive to Camp Nano is the introduction of cabins, a small message board containing four to six participants that became functional in August 2011. Participants have the option of inviting specific Wrimos into their cabin, joining a cabin with participants of the same age, activity level, word count goal, or genre. They may also opt to join a random cabin or not to join a cabin at all. Cabins have a central “wall” on which Wrimos post messages to all other campers in their cabin. These messages are viewable only to other Wrimos in that cabin. The NaNo tech team runs cabin assignments frequently, so new cabinmates can show up in a cabin after the month begins and users can switch cabins if they so desire. Cabins close a few days after the event ends, but participants can continue to connect through private messages or through the main NaNo forums.

Sounds interesting! As someone who is (totally not jealous of not being) unable to participate in NaNoWriMo, this sounds like a pretty good compromise and I think I`ll probably give it a go this year if I don`t burn myself out writing in June. While writing is a fun pursuit, writing long works can be a real slog, and there`s nothing like a combination of encouragement and peer pressure to keep you on the straight and narrow!

Rob

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