Camp Nano

Oh my Gods, I'm having so much fun with this. For those of you that don't know what it is, it's like Nanowrimo - handled by the same organization, too - but it's not during November, and you get to set your own goals, rather than the 50k goal of the regular Nano. They have one during April, and during July. I heard of the thing on like March 31st. So, I set a goal of 30k to get my thousand words a day in and I was... not exactly off. In the first week I had written a whopping 1557 words.

I've been getting much better this week - in part because I discovered a fun section of the forums. Word wars and sprints (and various other challenges). They are an interesting way to make it all fun, and I'm going to have to keep doing this even after April to help myself finish. How they work is simple. In the word wars you are given a certain amount of time - anything from 5 minutes to an hour - and you race to see who can write the most words in that time. Sprints are the opposite - you're given a word count and you race to see who can finish first. I've been just doing them by myself, but even without competition it's a great motivator.

They have other challenges, too. Two that I've already played with are the three digit sprint, and the daily average sprint. In the three digit sprint, you look at the last post which will have a three digit number. You write that number of words and then leave the last three digits of your word count as the number for the next person to write. For the daily average sprint, you look at your average words per day and you write however many words it would take to bring your average up to an even multiple of a hundred. Gets a potentially substantial amount of writing done and gives you a nice round number for your word count.

One that looks like a lot of fun if you like to write while watching tv is a variation of drinking games. You put on your favourite show (works best if you have DVR so that you can pause it...) and assign yourself a certain number of words to write everytime something that tends to happen a lot on that show happens. For example, I've seen Doctor Who fans use things like writing a certain number of words everytime the Doctor uses the sonic screwdriver for something, or everytime he uses that piece of paper that manages to look like something official no matter where he is or what he's trying to do - or everytime they travel somewhere in the Tardis. Along the same vein is one that is almost like one of those bizarre facebook quiz-type things that get passed around every so often. There are random statements and you have to write a certain number of words for every statement that applies to you.

All in all, I'm very glad that I found this thing and signed up for it. I wrote almost 4,000 words in two days, most of which was from playing with the challenges. And now I'm off to do a 1,000 word sprint to push my total over the 20k mark. (Erm, that's my total for the whole book. My Nano total is just over 5500)

That's my ramble for this week. Check back on Friday to meet Phoenix.

Okay, I think I'm going to do away with Positive Thinking Mondays. I can never remember to do the darn things, anyway. When I remember to do them, it will be a little bonus post - but I'm not going to beat myself up if they don't get done.