This is the last weekend before Camp NaNo opens… get your Muses ready to rumble!

Gathering Supplies

Now is the time to make sure your pencils are sharpened, your pens are topped off, and your caffeine is well at hand. Charge up those laptops, sync up those smartphones and for the love of all that is Good™ and Wonderful™—make sure you have a plan to back-up your work!

Personally I use Q10 and make a new text document for each day and save it to my desktop, my laptop, my thumbdrive, and of course, the blog. Keeping multiple copies may be a little silly, but I never have to worry about formatting errors or losing a file.

Plus Q10 makes these wonderful typewriting noises (and has a timer, and a progress tracker, and you can change the colors to lime green and hot pink if you want to go blind!).

Alternately, you could just use Google Docs.

Preparing For Battle

Time to put your Muses in gear, so break out the timer and let’s get cracking! (If you’re not using Q10 and you don’t have an egg timer, then pop open E.gg Timer.)

Pick whatever medium you are going to be using for NaNo, be it paper and pen, smartphone, or laptop. Set the timer for five minutes: you’re going to be writing about what you think will be happening on Day 1.

Write about when you’ll write, where you’ll write, who’ll be writing with you, what you’ll be feeling like, heck write about what you’ll be wearing, just write for five minutes and describe as much as you can. This is an old fashioned brain dump, so no editing!

Now take a look at that wordcount– not too shabby, eh?

Divide that number by five and then multiple it by your daily wordcount goal of 1,667. The result is how many minutes you’ll need to set aside to write—but the best bit is you only have to do it five minutes at a time. (Everyone can spare five minutes, right?)

If the number is low, don’t be discouraged, that’s what weekends are for! *grin*

A Call to Arms!

Friends are what make NaNo work, they’re with you on your boom days (5,000 words!) they’re with you on your bust days (0 words!), they’re with you for all thirty days of NaNoing madness and it’s your job keep each other afloat.

So if the Camp NaNoWriMo Website it up, hop on that, if not swing by the normal NaNoWriMo boards, or join up with JulNoWriMo who are on their seventh year of July NaNoing. Heck, you can even hang out on Facebook or LiveJournal or Dreamwidth and play, the internet is a wide and wooly place and there are plenty of NaNoers to find.

Just make sure you have your mutual support setup before you head into the murky waters of Camp. The easiest way to drown is if no ones watching, so keep an eye on your friends and never stop doggie paddling!

Remember: Life Trumps NaNo

And while you’re gearing up for NaNo and all the joy it brings… do remember that real life comes first. This is a game, abet a fun and addicting one, and NaNo should never win out over clean laundry, sleep, or proper nutrition.

The fun is in finding ways to fit writing into your life, not to try and fit your life into NaNo. (‘Cause trust me, things get messy damn quick if you don’t.)

I’ll have another post in a day or so that outlines how I’m going to shoehorn NaNo into my life. My personal goal for July Camp is to hit 50,000 words and be ready to do it again in August.

And Now We Wait…

My blog progress report posts are all waiting in draft, lined up throughout July like a tiny army of dominos. Whether or not I’ll be posting the draft as well as the summary is still up in the air…

Raven the Writing Desk (netbook) is fully charged for lunchtime typing and Holly (desktop) is waiting in her place above the treadmill. Alas, Sven (laptop) will not be joining the fun this year, but he may helping take up some slack come August.

Now if I can just resist the urge to hit OfficeMax and buy even more empty three ring binders…