Summer camp. But with writing! Once again I’ll be plunging headfirst into the month-long writing frenzy that is Camp NaNoWriMo.

In April I was still looking for a job and had all the free time that wasn’t spent applying for jobs to write. But at the end of May I became a productive member of our capitalist society once more, and am now at a full-time job 5 days a week. This will obviously affect my writing time and output, so I’ve set July’s goal with that in mind at 25k words. It’s less than my original goal for April, but it’s a goal I managed to accomplish that month. Ideally I will exceed that wordcount, but at least I know it’s a target I can hit.

To get to 25k words, I’ll need to write about 807 words per day.

Right now my plan is to do some writing on my lunch breaks at work, as well as when I get home. Normally I read while I eat my lunch, but I also read before I go to sleep, so cutting out my afternoon reading won’t mean cutting out reading entirely. There isn’t a convenient cafe I can slip off to and write during those lunch breaks, but there is a park only a block away. Weather permitting, I may end up taking my food and my notebook there for some uninterrupted writing time.

One thing I have learned from my recent NaNoWriMo and Camp NaNoWriMo wins is that sprints and the Pomodoro Technique is a great way for me to get out the words. My version of Pomodoro-ing is perhaps less rigid: I put on music, and tell myself I only have to write until the end of the song. Most songs are 3-4 minutes long, which is such a small amount of time that my brain almost automatically goes, “Yeah, we can do that.” But 9 times out of 10 I find that by the end of the first song, I’m on a roll and I end up writing for longer than 3-4 minutes. By the time I look up, it’s usually been about 20 minutes, and I can take a mini break! I’ll be applying this modified Pomodoro Technique a little more strictly to my writing routine in the coming month (which is to say: I’ll be keeping those mini breaks mini, possibly by using a timer). Hopefully that, plus my lunchtime writing, will make 807 words every day a breeze.

Overall, I’m excited! I didn’t get nearly as many words written in May or June as I wanted (“Best laid plans…” etc. etc.), but I’m hoping to start Camp NaNoWriMo with 40k words already written on this manuscript, which puts me at 65k—or more?!?—by the end of July. My current word count is just over 36k, which means I have some writing to do before the end of the month, but I think I can manage that.

To anyone else attending Camp this July: Good luck and happy writing!

P.S. There’s a book post coming soon too, for my second quarter reading.