Getting Through Camp With a Little Help From Your Friends

One great feature about Camp NaNoWriMo is the ability to get to know  the fellow writers in your virtual cabin. Now, you may be asking: Just what is a virtual cabin? And will you look the other way on any inter-cabin prank wars?

Think of Camp NaNoWriMo cabins as your personal, kick-butt writing group during the month. Up to six writers are grouped together to chat and keep an eye on each other’s word count. (You can find out how to be sorted into one over at Camp News!)

If you’re already in one, you may be wondering what the next steps are. Fortunately, your fellow campers have come up with some amazingly creative ways to get the most out of their cabins, and I’d like to share some of my favorite ways with you:

Breaking the Ice and Getting Your Cabin Rocking

Writers can be reticent, especially when deeply immersed in a month-long project. That can lead to some pretty thick ice to break. Still, all it takes to turn a quiet cabin into a bustling hotbed of authorial wit and wisdom is some creative ice-breaking. Wrimos are multifaceted people, so showcase what makes you unique!  

“I offered to create book covers for my cabin mates. So far I’ve completed one, and another is on the way.”

— Camp Participant jodotha

Maybe you really just want a place you can relax and gab about your writing process. You can make your cabin like that, too!

“Our conversations have ranged from 90s pop culture (leading to our cabin name - Salute Your Shorts) to writing discussions and encouragement.”

— Camp Participant Shiflet

Speaking of cabin names…

Building Solidarity with your Cabin Mates

… a simple and effective way to make your cabin experience more enjoyable is to give it a unique identity. Some Campers have really run with this concept:

“Since we are all fantasy writers, we’ve chosen Word Wizards for the cabin name, and our mascot is a Rainbow Unicorn (wearing a wizard hat).”

— Camp Participant sarasvati.river

It does help a lot of people to request cabin mates who’ll have something in common with you, whether that’s age range, word-count goal, or genre.

“The five of us are writing science fiction with varying word count goals and together we represent four countries.”

— Camp Participant Dazophia

That’s the kind of thing that’s so magical about the cabin-sorting process. Five people from four different countries were brought together simply by having a common interest in writing science fiction.

If It’s Not Right, Don’t Force It! Keep Searching

It might sound like a lot of these people simply lucked into the perfect cabin on the first try. Not so! Dazophia didn’t find her international house of sci-fi writers on the first try:

“I cycled through seven cabins in March before settling into my current cabin. This one is just right!”

It’s a common theme I noticed as I read through the “Tell Us About Your Cabin!” forum thread. Lots of people found their ideal cabins only after an exhaustive search. Fortunately, there are resources to help you along the way:

“I’m loving my cabin. We didn’t know each other before finding each other in the Finding Cabin Buddies forum, but we’re getting a long very well.”

— Camp Participant LovelyLici

Maybe you’re looking for the perfect cabin to help you push through the final two weeks of Camp this April. Or maybe you’ve started looking ahead to July, and planning for your best Camp experience ever. Remember, you’re only limited by your own creativity. So go forth and  make your novel, and Camp what you want it to be!

— Mike

Photo by Flickr user juicyrai.