I love camp. The years I went as a teenager for a week to my favorite overnight camp I could barely contain my anticipation. I carefully planned what I’d wear, what I needed to spruce up my bunk wall, and what activities I wanted to try. Later, in my early twenties, I was a summer camp counselor at another camp. Whenever a cabin full of my girls set aside being “cool” for a week and threw themselves with me into the joy of team competitions and cabin activities like crazy hair day (and let me tell you, one group made these curls of mine into an AWESOME white girl ‘fro), it was a fantastic experience. I’m expecting my first official Camp NaNoWriMo month to be much the same.

The purpose of NaNoWriMo in November is to write 50,000 words of a novel from scratch. Technically, that’s also the purpose of the April and July Camps, but with more flexibility in word count. They’re set up in a friendly low-key environment similar to its parent program.

For me, I’m not writing a new novel this month. I’m actually being a rebel and working on revising two that have already been written. One has gone through many revisions already but still needs some fine-tuning. The other is my November novel (winner! oh, yeah!) that needs a first revision and few more new scenes added to flesh out the plot.

Honestly, I’d be revising both of my novels in April even if I wasn’t a camper, but why shouldn’t I do it with companionship? I don’t have to write solo all the time. Camp is just an excuse to feel a part of something greater while I’m in the process, and maybe make some new writer friends. Just like my real camp experiences years ago, I’m looking forward to meeting my cabin mates!