Report from Camp NaNoWriMo: What I did and what I did it for

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

There were a couple of things I had to think about as July 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 July began.

About a month lapsed between the completion of Admiral Fish and the Rainy Day Parade which was my April  NaNoWriMo project and when I begun my poetry project for the year. Admittedly, it took a lot longer for me to write the poetry project than I would care to think about. But as that manuscript was winding down, I started to think about the next thing.

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.  Admiral Fish and the Rainy Day Parade took about 20 days.

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 July project, I thought I'd pick beautiful places to set the some stories, Denver and the Pacific Northwest. I chose a set of characters with all sorts of secrets.

As with the April program, Camp NaNoWriMo takes place over a 31 day period, the month of July. 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 manuscript. 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 July first.