Camp NaNoWriMo is a summer version of the traditional NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) challenge. It’s run by The Office of Letters and Light, the same folks who run the November event.

This year’s summer camp sessions are June and August, which gives a little more breathing room than last year’s July-August marathon. But other than the nicer weather there are only a few minor changes to the normal November madness.

The Challenge

The Camp challenge is what you’d expect: write 50,000 words in 30 days, but this time instead of being assigned real-life regions you’re paired up into cabins of six people. You can ask to be bunked with people in the same genre and/or age range and/or specific people– but last year the matching for specific people was a bit wonky.

So be careful when picking your genre, once that’s set it can’t be changed!

The Forums

Unless they’ve made major changes to the website since last year, the very first thing you’ll notice (after setting up your profile) is that the Camp website doesn’t have forums. Instead it has an in-cabin chat system that only allows you to talk to your five bunkmates.

Last year the in-cabin chatter was rare and the interface was poorly formatted– so you’ll want to hop over to the Camp forum on the normal NaNoWriMo boards and chat there instead.

Different Strategies

It’s the same challenge, so the same tips and techniques will work—only this time around you don’t have to worry about Thanksgiving sneaking up on you. (Unfortunately, you might have finals instead.)

For those lucky folks still in school doing NaNo during Summer Break is a lot easier, but only if you can hold yourself to the daily wordcount. There’s nothing more distracting that an sunny day and friends who are worried about hitting 1,667…

That said, huzzah for more NaNos! *grin*

Same Song, Different Verse

I’m over on the Camp NaNoWriMo website as MarthaBechtel and on the NaNoWriMo boards as the same name—so feel free to drop me a line! 🙂 (I don’t check my NaNoMail as much when NaNo isn’t running, so I apologize in advance for any delays).