I hark on about National Novel Writing Month a lot. Because it’s really the first thing that pushed me to be able to finish my first (although short and massively under a normal novel word count) novel. And since then, I’ve known I can do it, if I put my mind to it. And if I’m dedicated enough.

But NaNoWriMo in November isn’t always at a good time of the year for everyone. It’s near Christmas, it’s near Thanksgiving, it’s near my birthday (which you should all be very concerned with). It runs alongside many exam periods for educational centres… it’s just generally not a great time of year, besides being able to snuggle up warm with a notebook or your laptop and just write.

It also doesn’t massively cater for anyone who doesn’t want to write a novel. Sure, you can submit 50,000 words of anything, but… what about the scriptwriters? The graphic novel authors? The radio writers? The short story maestro? The playwright? All of these people are somewhat shoved to the gutter in favour of The Novel when it comes to NaNoWriMo.

But, never fear! For Camp NaNoWriMo runs twice a year!

Camp NaNo is great. It’s great for students who have nothing do to over summer and want to work on their personal projects. It’s great for people who write something other than a novel. And it’s great for those crazy people who want to do NaNo 3 times a year – once in April, once in July, and once more for feeling in November.

CampĀ  NaNo is actually about to start in July – but it’s even better than NaNo in some ways, because it’s more suitable for younger writers, and you get assigned to cabins. Cabins connect you with like-minded writers, so you’ve always got someone cheering you on from the sidelines (or someone doing worse than you, whichever motivates you more).

I highly recommend checking it out this year. I know I’ll be giving it a go.