Camp NaNoWriMo is nearly here! What is Camp NaNoWriMo? Great question! It’s a virtual writing retreat where you can:

1. Set your own word-count goal.
   
2. Tackle any writing project, novel or not.
   
3. Join a twelve-person virtual cabin and be a part of a focused writing group.
   

Every writer needs a mentor, especially when they’re setting out on into the wilderness of their imagination. To help you tame plot bunnies, overcome writer’s block, and track down your characters, we’re partnering with fellow nonprofit We Need Diverse Books.

We Need Diverse Books and Camp NaNoWriMo

This April, WNDB and NaNoWriMo asked four amazing authors to serve as Camp NaNoWriMo’s Camp Counselors: providing mentorship, encouragement, advice, and, sometimes, the occasional comfort after a particularly tough scene. How?

• By sending virtual Care Packages through the Camp site’s mail system! We’ll also share those packages here on Tumblr!
  
• By hosting a #WNDBNaNo tweet-chat on Wednesday, April 8, at 10 AM PDT!
  

The Camp Counselors

Camp NaNoWriMo is a go! Whether you’re a returning Camper, or brand new to our virtual writing retreat, we’re ready to guide you through this month of writing-madness. We’re taking the SURVIVAL acronym from a wilderness survival guide, and using it to lead you through the depths of the forests, lakes, and crags of your writing journey:

• S – Size Up the Situation
• U – Use All Your Senses, Undue Haste Makes Waste
• R – Remember Where You Are
• V – Vanquish Fear and Panic
• I – Improvise
• V – Value Living
• A – Act Like the Natives
• L – Live by Your Wits, But for Now, Learn Basic Skills

When my sister was younger, my mom used to say that she was “full of good intentions and bad sense”: I wanted to know if it really was safe for her to jump off the banister from halfway up the stairs?

“Sure,” she’d say. “Actually, if you get a pillow, I should be able to do it from the top.”

We here at NaNoWriMo HQ are heading into our winter nap today. Before we close out 2012, though, we wanted to reflect with you on what’s been an incredible year. This year, more than 340,000 of you joined us in writing novels in November, and 38,000+ people around the world reached their goal of writing 50K words. To those of you who decided to tackle National Novel Writing Month at all: we salute you.

2012 was the year that you decided you were going to try to write down the story that’s been inside of you for so long, and whether you got that first draft down this November or not, we know you’ll be typing in “The End” that much sooner because you’ve started.

As much as we push that goal of crossing the 50K finish line, we think that sparking that fire of creative ambition, and watching budding writers take that first step is just as important and vital a mission. That’s why, starting in January, we’ll be launching the “Now What” months. After all, you have a first draft, or the beginnings of one, in hand.

The end of NaNoWriMo 2012 is fast approaching. We all began the month of November in the same place, facing the same blank page, but December 1 looms, and with it, at least four or five different ends to the journey we started together. Each ending comes with a conversation, some of which I’ve imagined below.

The Winner:

Throughout the on-season, we’ll be asking Wrimos to share one inspiration-filled day, tracking every plot bunny, heart-thrill, and eye-opener for 24 hours that will help them to set the tone for their NaNoWriMo novels.

Read on for TW Brown’s very apropos post-Halloween Inspiration Diary!

Fall can be my slow season (until November, of course). The upside is that I get caught up on a lot of things that have piled up over the summer. This last summer was busier than usual as my name had been heavily circulated around the small-press and indie scene as an editor.

I’ve been officially diagnosed with OCD and am one of those types who has to schedule his days out meticulously. Of course, today of all days, I overslept.

6:51 a.m. I am usually up and out of bed by 6:15; Aoife, my Border Collie, normally crawls up from where she has curled up against my legs and licks my face if I sleep in. I guess the game last night wore her out, too.

So now I am behind… and today is the day I am supposed to wow the NaNoWriMo folks with a snapshot of my daily routine. Great.

This month, twice a week, we’ll be offering advice from NaNoLand (read more in our initial blog post!). Our second session includes questions about how to write without internet access, and whether you can write romance without ever having been in love… Require some wisdom of your own? Ask us here!

Dear NaNoWriMo, I’m going camping the first two weekends of November! It’s crucial that I be there. No internet service. What do I do? – Worrying in Whitney

First of all, I am intrigued by the importance of these trips. Are you part of some covert camping ops team? Or are you just really into s’mores? Either way, I have a few thoughts on your predicament.

Here at NaNoWriMo, we believe in writing in all its forms—all the better if it’s available for the world to see. That’s the same idea being celebrated during tomorrow’s National Day on Writing. Writers around the world are encouraged to share their scribblings (of any sort) with the hashtag #WhatIWrite today.

Tell a new acquaintance that you’re a writer, and the immediate follow-up is typically “Oh, what do you write?” (Occasionally, you get sympathy eyes, and then a swift change in subject. This is sometimes a relief.)

National Novel Writing Month is just around the bend! How around the bend? The sites are launching this week; that’s right, this week. Are you unsure about committing to writing a novel this November? Are there people you want to convince to join the world’s biggest writing event? Or do you just need to explain why you’ll be writing a novel this November?

You’re in the right place, because we have ten great reasons why you should do NaNoWriMo:

1. Because you get this deep down feeling in your bones after you read an amazing story; a need to drop everything right then and write something, too. Because every once in a while, while riding your bike, you mull over the dream you had last night and suddenly wish you had an extra pair of hands so you could whip out a pen and jot that bit of dialogue down and see where it takes you.

I used to have this recurring dream as a kid. I’d be sitting in a park somewhere, or at the dinner table, or in a classroom, and suddenly the sky would blink open, or the roof would come apart, and this hand would reach out, palm open, waiting for me to take hold.

It sounds a little terrifying written down like that, but they were never nightmares. I always felt this excitement in my gut, because I knew that as soon as I took that hand, I would be flung into a new adventure: I’d wake up to find myself in an undiscovered Incan ruin, or the bowels of space.

NaNoWriMo and YWP 2012 shirts, posters, and other goodies are now available, and are pretty spectacular. We have to tip our hats to Nic Buron, who was the man behind much of the design goodness on display. We sat him down for one of the OLL’s typically hard-hitting, in-depth interviews.

Read on to find out what inspired Nic while designing for NaNoWriMo, how the Big Bang plays into his future novel plans, and his ongoing relationship with Taylor Swift:

Nicky B. Let’s talk about your design influences. Be as pretentious as possible. 

Writers are some of the most curious people I know; you’d have to be to feed the drive to fashion worlds and stitch out entire lives. Curiosity forces you into the borderlands of your experience and imagination. And the borderlands are where you make your discoveries. Where you meet someone who wants something you’d never think to want, or see a sight that should be counted as the least-talked-about-natural-wonder-of-the-world. Where you come across a piece of writing that makes you think, “Of course, humans invented writing. We had to.”

When I’m on a roll, it can be hard to think about anything else but my novel. Honestly, some of the time, that does translate into choosing to stay in when everyone goes out. “Beach camping? That’s cool, man. Save me a s'more. Dig a moat around your tent to keep the sand rats away.” (That last is actual advice given by a guide in Costa Rica. Truly terrible.)

Dear Writer,

Consider the first card of the Tarot deck, titled The Fool. There’s this young man traipsing along with a small dog at his heel, carrying a flower in his other hand, gazing raptly at the sky—and about to step off a cliff, because he isn't watching his feet. A fool indeed. Does this feel familiar? You’re doing much the same thing. What made you ever think you could bat out a bad book like that, let alone write anything readable?

Sigh. You’re a lost soul. So there’s no help for it but to join the lowly company of the other aspect of The Fool. Because the fact is, that Fool is a Dreamer, and it is Dreamers who ultimately make life worthwhile for the unimaginative rest of us. Dreamers consider the wider universe. Dreamers build cathedrals, shape fine sculptures, and yes, generate literature. Dreamers are the artists who provide our rapacious species with some faint evidence of nobility.

- Piers Anthony, NaNoWriMo Pep

Dear Piers,

Claire and Jenn joined the MLs in London last year, but have been writing with NaNoWriMo since 2008 and 2007 respectively. We asked them to give us the Wrimo’s Guide to noveling in London, home to Dickens and countless other literary giants.

Kristina is a six-time NaNoWriMo winner, and all-around awesome person. Not only has she accomplished putting down 50,000 words every November since 2006, she’s somehow found the time to write, sing, and perform in the music video for “The NaNoWriMo Song”.

Thankfully, since it isn’t November, Kristina found the time to sit down for a whirlwind personality quiz and interview. You can also check out her YouTube channel, and blog!

The Personality Quiz, NaNo-style: