Increasing Writing Productivity – Camp NaNo Style!

Joynell Schultz,

Guess what time it is? Camp NaNoWriMo time! I’m so excited. After participating (and failing) regular NaNoWriMo in November, I can’t wait for camp. Camping is so much fun — all due to the interaction with your cabin mates.

My main goal for camp is to write a 15,000 word short story with a title of “Hidden” for a multi-author project I’m participating in, but I have a secret goal…

Since my funk back in December (when I thought all my writing sucked, and I’d should throw in the towel) my productivity has really dropped off. I’m still moving forward, but at a snail pace compared to how most of 2016 went. For April’s camp, I want to get back in a routine. Back focused on what I love to do — write!

When I look at why I don’t get enough words down on paper, there’s two main reasons.

  1. Motivation: The massive drive I had last year is lost. Where did you go? I miss you! I think the urge to publish something kept me going. Now that I have one (soon to be two) books published, I don’t have that same fire.
  2. Distraction: Having published books means I need to spend time marketing and networking. I find myself spending way too much time doing this. (Yeah, have you been following my 1000 “true” fan blog series? Yup. Lots of time devoted to that.)

So, for camp… I’m making a commitment:

I WILL WRITE FOR 30 MINUTES, UNINTERRUPTED EVERY DAY.

This is not revising, outlining, or editing. This is hard-core putting new words down on paper. I’m going to track the number of words per day. I want to see if I learn to write faster and more efficient as the month goes by. In May, I’d love to up that time to a full hour dedicated solely to writing. (With the wi-fi off on my laptop and my phone on “do not disturb.”)

So…what’s my Camp NaNo project? A group of authors are getting together to write short stories (between 5000 and 20,000 words) with the title “Hidden.” The story can be about anything, as long as it has the “hidden” theme. We’re all going to publish our own stories this fall and cross-promote each other. It’ll be a ton of fun, since I love collaboration! (If you’d like to join us, there’s definitely still time and space — Here’s the Facebook group to join about it.)

I made my first draft of the cover here (It’ll still change 100 times before I publish):

 

Here’s the summary of the project: A pregnant fairy godmother flees to the human world to hide her secret as she looks for the father of her child.

(I have a full outline written — it was something to do while I was stuck in an airplane for 4 hours in Paris last week.)

Are you doing Camp NaNoWriMo? I’d love to hear about your project.

36 Comments

      1. The only time I agreed to go camping it was in my grandpa’s backyard and we all ended up inside lol. Regarding namonoamao I have a general idea what it is but no idea what the camping version is all about 🙂

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        1. Virtual camping, NaNoWriMo style, is nice. You get to pick your writing goal. Mine is only 15K words in April. (You can also use it to revise.)

          It’s more fun than regular NaNo because you get a cabin of 20 other writers and you check in with each other — keep each other going. It’s nice and laid back. The best part is you can adjust your goal as the month goes, so there is no reason you don’t “win”. It’s great when you need some motivation.

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          2. I created my own cabin and asked people to join who were writing non-novel length speculative fiction — so Yeah. I have some awesome people. (Two of them I knew from other avenues.) I still have room, if you’re interested. 🙂

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          6. Your goal can be anything you want. Words or even hours spent writing/editing. You don’t need your project yet — I think you can just build a place holder i.e. “Title to be determined” You can adjust it all month. It runs the month of April, so you’ll have to come up with something in the next few days. You’re welcome to join our “Hidden” Project, if you want to write a story with the title of “hidden”.

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          7. Yeah I’ll join you guys! Hidden sounds good. My username is “tripleblacktri” I’ll try to hit the big 5K 😂

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    1. Yes, good luck! Last April, I actually adjusted my camp goal down so I’d meet it, and I still didn’t! No worries though, I still published that book. This camp, I’m hoping to meet the goal.

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  7. I had a plan to write about a girl who has a secret (by definition ‘hidden’) that she never shares with anyone. The plan was to make it into a novel, but a 15K word short story sounds interesting as well, especially because I find it really hard to stay in one story for a long time. Is the FB group still open to new members? I think this is a really cool idea!

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    1. Hi Arpita! How have you been? YES! we have room for the Hidden project. Join the facebook group and I’ll let you in. You can learn more about the project there. Also, if you need a cabin for camp, feel free to join ours, as your idea about a secret seems like it would fit perfectly.

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      1. Thanks, Joynell! I am good, thank you. I applied for the FB group and will join the Camp as well. Can you send me the Camp details? I created the synopsis for my book. I am aiming at 25K words. Even if I don’t make it, it will give me a jumpstart to finish the book. The last book I started writing in Camp NaNo (July, ’16) was recently published. I am hoping for the same with this. 🙂

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        1. Hey, Welcome to the Hidden project! I see Laura added you into our facebook group. If you let me know your username for Camp NaNo, I can add you into our cabin. It’s a mix of short story writers and people working on Hidden. Our goal is to publish the stories in September/October/November. Hopefully, the facebook group gives some guidance. Basically, just write a story now. The rest will come later.

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