So, as a quick disclaimer – I’m not American, so I don’t really know what the true summer camp experience is like, much less the feeling of returning home after a month in a cabin by a lake, but I’ve seen the Lindsay Lohan version of The Parent Trap upwards of twenty times, and I’ve been to America twice in my life (both times to that very specific part of Florida with the giant singing mice, and I assume the rest of America to be very much like that). So I think I’m pretty much an expert in this field. It’s probably just as well that I’m not talking about an actual camp, and that we’ve all just been sitting at home this entire time trying to write something in a language we’ve learned. It’s probably for the best, as I’m sure the food would have been abysmal, the pranks would have been unimaginative (all imagination resources being used on writing, of course) and there’d be all manner of creepy crawlies in the cabins – neither of which are conducive to good storytelling, in my humble experience.
As I’ve spent a large part of this month coming up with prompts and making pretty graphics for them, as well as trying my utmost to keep up with the actual writing side of Camp Polyglot NaNoWriMo, I’ve not had a lot of time for extra-curricular writing. So I thought I’d use this month to sort of showcase the project as a whole – as a sort of aggregator, putting all of the prompts in one place for anyone who dares take on the challenge at some point in the future. So if you’re reading this after August of 2021 (which, I mean, you all will be because I’ll be posting this on the 1st of September), and want to have a go at the challenge before the main Polyglot NaNoWriMo challenge in November (or indeed at any other time), you’ll find all thirteen of the prompts (plus some vague rules to try to stick to) below.
In the interest of being completely honest, I haven’t quite finished the prompts myself. I’m going to give myself two extra weeks just because of being so busy at work, and then I’ll start thinking about how I want to turn these characters into a story I can be proud of. That’s sort of always how I’ve done it though, without getting too airy-fairy about it, I like to let my characters tell me who they are, and then I like to stick them into situations and sort of see how they react. Is this a good way of forming a cohesive story arc with a plot that actually makes sense? I suppose only time will tell.
How did you guys get on with the challenge, if you took part? Even if you didn’t, do you think it’s something beneficial that would be worth doing in future years as preparation for Polyglot NaNoWriMo? I’d love to hear your thoughts, feedback is always welcome. As always you can leave a comment on the bottom of this post or you can find me on Twitter and Instagram (I’m @sprakskatan on both). In any case, thank you for reading and take care of yourselves out there. I’ll see you next month.
– J.
den språkliga skatan 