This month, 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. Mary Robinette Kowal, award-winning writer and puppeteer (you heard me!), shares just how important it is to write smart:

• 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

NaNoWriMo teaches you to write fast and to write without fear. I have always loved that adventurous plunge into wild story. Even if you are an outliner, like me, you’ll still hit a point where you head off the map and into uncharted territory. That journey can become exhausting because you have to build the landscape and navigate it at the same time.

Sometimes a feature that looks pretty can become impassable, so you have to backtrack and work your way around or invent a passage through the mountains. That’s when you start questioning if you will survive the month…

This month, 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. Howard Tayler, writer and illustrator of the comic Schlock Mercenary, shares the one key trait of all native writers:

• 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

If you want to write professionally, it stands to reason that you will need to act the way professional writers act. They are the natives in this wondrous paradise to which you wish to relocate. You will need to do the things that they do.

This month, 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. Nathan Bransford, author of the Jacob Wonderbar series, and blogger extraordinaire reminds us why living has to come before writing:

• 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

Writing, by its very nature, is a solitary activity. It requires blocking out the world around you, surrounding yourself only with your own thoughts, and swimming and diving through the oceans of your imagination.

It’s also a tremendously time-consuming activity, one that requires blocking off days on the calendar when you would much prefer to be out doing something far easier than pouring your heart out onto the page. You have to focus, power through when the writing gets hard, and above all, make sacrifices to complete a novel.

This month, 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. Therese Walsh, author of The Last Will of Moira Leahy and cofounder of Writer Unboxed tells us how improvisation can be an essential tool in the writer’s toolbox :

• 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

Whose Line is it Anyway? is one of my favorite television shows; I’m always amazed at the skill of these improvisers as they craft an entertaining story from scratch within minutes. Their philosophy and techniques can help you, too, as you write your draft in record time. Here’s how:

This month, 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. Our very own Michael Adamson, a valiant intern here at Camp HQ expounds on V — Vanquish Fear and Panic:

• 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

Picture yourself upon a mountaintop.

The wind is howling. Your mind is tired. Your body is exhausted. You wonder what madness drove you here. Your route back to camp is a winding, precarious trail down the mountainside. The skies begin to darken. You are miles from safety. Out there in the distance, a wildcat does growl….

This month, 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. Joanna Penn from The Creative Penn tackles ‘R’ — Remember Where You Are:

• 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

I took part in my first NaNoWriMo when I was an avid reader but didn’t have much of a clue about writing fiction. I ‘failed’ that year, but from that mess came the seed of my first novel, Pentecost. Fast forward a few years and I’ve sold over 55,000 copies of my first three books, and have just finished my fourth novel, which I started during NaNoWriMo last year. 

Your writing life will change over time, but if you’re just starting out, here’s where you are right now:

This month, 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. Liz Fenton and Lisa Steinke from Chick Lit Is Not Dead tackle ‘U’ — Use All Your Senses, Undue Haste Makes Waste:

• 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

They say two heads are better than one. And in our case, we must agree! You see, even though we went to the same high school and college, have names that sound similar and write identical narratives, our writing process could not be more different. And while that difference may have caused some pretty major girlfights early on,, it’s now something we celebrate. (Well, most of the time anyway…)

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.”