Camp Nano - get out of your way!

Today you'll have noticed it's the first of July and this means two things - it's halfway through the year (yes, really!) and Camp NaNoWriMo begins today. For those not in the know  NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) happens every November and the challenge is to write a novel of 50,000 or more words in 30 days. You can plan beforehand but, in the true style of the challenge, you don't write a word until the first of November. When you've typed the magic words "the end", you can encrypt your work and upload it to a special members area where the word count is verified and you're sent the prized "you did it!" certificate. I have two of these certificates on my wall and they make me smile every time I remember the manic panic that made up my Nano experiences.

Purists will throw their hands up in horror that you cannot possibly write a novel that fast. In a way they're right because editing a Nano novel is a long job, with lots of "did I really write that?" moments of horror but also some "did I really write that?" moments of wow. Where Nano excels is that it teaches you to get out of your own way and gives you permission to write something, anything, to get you onto the next chapter – there's no place for thinking about the perfect word in the perfect sentence on that deadline. And that's okay because come the 1st of December, you have something you can work with, where, without Nano, you may only have had a blank screen. Nano shows you what you can achieve and takes away any limitations that you put on yourself. And it's often those limitations that are the most . . . well, limiting. I wonder how much more of our dreams we’d achieve and how much faster would we get there if we didn't put our own ceiling on them.

Camp Nano is NaNoWriMo but in July. I'm not doing it this time as I've just finished a first draft but, on checking out the website, when I saw the word count can be anything between 10,000 and 1,000,000, I heard myself shrieking in my head "one million! one million in a month!?" and, right there, is one of those limitations. Why not one million? That would really encourage you to go for it, wouldn't it? If my experience was anything to go by at the end of that you wouldn't be able to string any coherent words together, nor would you have any letters left on your laptop keys, but think of the brilliant achievement if you only hit a tenth of that.

So to those who are taking part, I salute you and hope you hit your magic number. As for me, I'm entering edit city, fountain pen and big smile at the ready because this is where I make my Frankenstein beautiful.