THIS summer, well we'll all just agree that the weather wasn't all that summery, so what can people do in the summer to enjoy themselves?
Walk the streets searching for trouble? Getting drunk for no particular reason? Or just plain staying in bed?
Well personally that wasn't the kind of summer that I envisaged when that last day of term rolled around.
I wanted to relax, but while still doing something that helped me better myself or was at least a tiny bit productive.
So when I heard about camp nanowrimo ( that's national novel writing month for the majority of you, who I assume don't have any idea) I was ecstatic that finally something I could do was available that would help me further my skill in writing over the summer for fun!
But then when you read the overall goal of the "30 days of literary abandon" it seems all consuming.
Writing 50,000 words in one month? Impossible you say?
Well, tens of thousands of people all around the world sign up for it every summer, and even more in the regular nanowrimo in November, and most of them actually complete the goal!
Personally, I think that it's a massive achievement to even get a couple of hundred words of your dream novel down on paper, so when I found out about all these people writing so many words in only 30 days, I was anxious to get started myself. But then I started to doubt my ability. I told myself that I couldn't do it and that it was too many words.
But that's where my back-up came in. With the online community "go teen writers" that I have joined, I was never lacking any support during camp nanowrimo.
And, one word at a time, me and so many others wrote 1,666 words a day.
Yes, it got really difficult. There were times when my characters wouldn't stop trying to make their own decisions when the story needed them to do what I wanted.
There were days when I struggled to drag myself from my bed in order to get my words down. But I told myself that I could do this, that I was going to do whatever it took it finish that goal.
And it felt so good when my little word counter toppled over to 50,000 words on only day 28.
I had written 50,000 words, and my novel wasn't even finished yet. It was by far the biggest achievement that I have ever done myself.
So much better, in my opinion, than lying in bed or generally wasting your time.
And the best part is, I got to share that experience with so many people around the world.
From go teen writers and nanowrimo I have made friends who live in places like North Carolina, Canada and Wisconsin to name a few.
All those aren't even in Europe and yet I can safely call these people, who I have never met before in my life, my friends.
With communities (even online communities) like this, it is amazing to have someone to talk to you about what you're interested in – particularly because I've never met another person who has taken part in nanowrimo, and so non-writers don't understand some of the things that my online writer friends do.
Like how we can scream at characters when they are figments of our over-active imagination, or how we can't just make a plot go the way we want it, just because we want it to, or how sometimes inspiration comes at the strangest of times, about the strangest of things.
There I feel comfortable that I can say anything I want, and it won't be judged in the slightest. They are my second family.
So should everyone spend their summer in what I would say is a very productive manner, or is slouching around for the whole summer really the best bet?