Camp NaNoWriMo reflections of a creative challenge: What I did and what I did it for

I figured April is as good a month as any to write a novel. I mean, why not, right? I also knew that the Camp NaNoWriMo was coming in April. I had had a good experience with the November program, I thought I'd give it another go.

There were a couple of things I had to think about as April approached. I suppose the first was that I needed a project to work on, and the second, simply, I had to complete the project I had been working on before April began.

About a month lapsed between the completion of The Second Door which was my November NaNoWriMo project and when I begun Wabi Sabi. Admittedly, it took a lot longer for me to write Wabi Sabi than I would care to think about. But as that manuscript was winding down, I started to think about the next novel.

I do not think it is terribly difficult to write one novel after another. The opposite, in fact. I feel like once you start writing, you'll want to just keep writing. I had written the entire draft of The Second Door in just 13 days. It was 13 weeks for Wabi Sabi. As April approached, I wanted a new kind of story.

Of all the novels I've written, they all seem to be about the same general plots and themes: I like to write about skeletons in closets, road trips and booze and hangovers. Most of my stories are set in very specific locales. As I thought of ideas for the April novel, I thought I'd pick a beautiful place to set the story, a river town in the Pacific Northwest. I chose a pretty time of year, September. I chose a set of characters with all sorts of secrets.

As I continued to think about it, I decided that I would poke fun at all the stupid conspiracy theories and paranoia which has been plaguing people these days. This decision made me focus a little more on the story itself, because initially I wanted to write some surrealistic dribble.

As with the November program, Camp NaNoWriMo takes place over a 30 day period, the month of April. With the thought that a writer writes 1,667 words a day, at the end of the month that comes to a 50,000 word novel. Camp NaNoWriMo works a little differently than the November program. At Camp, you get put in a group “cabin” with up to 19 other writers. The thought behind this is that a group will be helpful to those who need it. In my first days I went from one cabin to another. I had a cabin mate who made the same move. The dialogue between the group of us was not particularly consistent. I got out of it what I needed, I suppose.

I began to write on April first.