Tag Archives: writing

BRB, I’m Writing: NaNoWriMo 2020

Posted on by
2

Hey there, folks! Sorry I’ve been radio silent for so long. First, I was elbow deep in work (October was absolutely NUTS folks, and I’m still in the process of getting totally caught up). And THEN, NaNoWriMo started last Sunday, and that’s been keeping me busy too.

I think most people know what NaNoWriMo is these days, but just in case: NaNoWriMo stands for “National Novel Writing Month,” which takes place every November. It’s an event that started in 1999, and the challenge is to write 50,000 words (which is considered the average length of a novel) in just one month, from Nov 1st through 30th. It’s a ton of fun for those of us who are writerly types. You can find the website and more info here: nanowrimo.org

This year is my fifth attempt to “win” Nano (by winning, we mean actually completing the 50,000 words — while the organization has partnered with some places that provide fun prizes for winners, such as a discount to purchase the writing program Scrivener and such, its really just a personal victory sort of win). The only time I actually finished and won was during my very first attempt back in 2010. Since then I have barely even come close to finishing 50k words — in fact, last year I only managed about 7k for the whole month. I try not to put too much pressure on myself, after all I am working and this is mostly supposed to be fun, but I am determined to make a real push for 50k words this year! *fingers crossed*

My project this year is a secondary-world fantasy, with the tentative title The Onyx Seal. I’m usually a very serious planner, with lots of outlines and chapter break-downs ready long before the month starts, but this year I came up with the story idea late in October, and have done almost NO planning whatsoever. I’m pretty much totally pantsing it this year, which is both terrifying and exciting! So far, I’m pretty much right on track with the daily word goal (I fell a tiny bit behind the word count last night, but I should be able to get caught back up today).

Also, because I am addicted to the Penguin Classics Cover Generator (found HERE), I made myself a book cover for my project:

If you’re a Nanoer, I wish you the best of luck with your project! If you’re not, but you’re intrigued, I hope you’ll take a look at the website, and come join us (either this year, or next year!).

Camp NaNo April 2020

Posted on by
Reply

This is my public announcement that I am participating in the April Camp NaNoWriMo event this year.

Can I assume that everyone knows what NaNoWriMo is? Is that a safe assumption? Probably, but just in case: NaNoWriMo stands for National Novel Writing Month. It is a nonprofit event and website that started… oh gosh… a long time ago, to encourage amateur writers (and everyone really) to put aside excuses, fear, hesitations, etc. and just sit down to write the first draft of a novel over the course of a single month. The official NaNoWriMo event takes place in November, and the goal is to write 50,000 words between Nov 1st and 31st (50,000 words being chosen ages ago, slightly at random, as the average length of a novel).

However, because some people simply cannot participate in November for any number of reasons – as a former professor, I can state that it is particularly difficult for teachers to participate in November – and because other people simply wanted more opportunities to write under the gamified conditions and community-building structure of the NaNoWriMo website, the organizers created two “Camp Nano” events: one in April and one in July.

Camp Nano is a little lower stakes than the official November event. The goal is not to write a novel, or 50,000. Instead you are given the opportunity to create your own writing goal: choose your own word-count goal, make an editing goal, work on short stories or whatever else you want. And you create writing groups (they used to be called “cabins” but that appears to be gone from their new revamped website now) to work with friends or any people you meet on the website.

I have participated in the official November event 4 times and have only “won” (ie, finished at least 50,000 words) ONCE. I have also participated in Camp Nano a couple times. But its been awhile.

I hadn’t initially planned on participating this year, but a friend of mine invited me to work in a cabin with her, and I figured “why not?” So I made a very last minute decision and just updated my profile on the Nano website yesterday – just in time to start officially writing tomorrow.

I have made a smaller goal for myself – just 20,000 words instead of 50,000 – and I will be working on a fanfiction piece instead of an original work. It has been a very very VERY long time since I have been able to write anything productively or coherently, and I am hoping that allowing myself to work on fanfiction, with a predetermined world and characters, will help shake my brain loose again so I might eventually move back into original work.

*fingers crossed*

I’d love to hear from others who are participating in Camp Nano this month! Or who have participated in any of the Nano events in the past! Why did you work on? How did you fare? Have you ever “won” in November? Do you win every year (my best friend often does and I am jealous of her…)? Sound off in the comments!

To Be Open and Honest

Posted on by

A lot of my friends write long, thoughtful “year-in-review” letters to send to all their friends and family around Christmas or New Year’s. I’ve never entirely understood this, and I’ve often wondered if it’s a midwest thing (having gone to high school and undergrad in Kansas City, most of my friends are from the midwest). No one in my immediate or extended family has ever done this in my entire life, and it is something I had never been exposed to until my high school friends started doing it.

I don’t write these sorts of letters myself. Frankly, my life is not interesting enough to write about, and a lot of things that I would include in such a letter are not necessarily things I need/want everyone to know about. The friends/family that I feel comfortable sharing such information with already know.

But I sometimes wonder why I don’t share the bad things, the problems, the embarrassing bits more freely, like I see so many of my friends do online – whether it be twitter or facebook or a blog or whatever. There are a few reasons, of course. First, I have an extremely high capacity for embarrassment. The smallest things mortify me. Seeing other people do or say something embarrassing mortifies me. There are entire movies and tv shows I am physically incapable of watching because the second embarrassment is genuinely painful to me. So there’s that. There is also the problem, as always, of not wanting to share my problems for fear of being accused of whining, or of trying to garner pity, or some such thing. And on top of all that, I am constantly fighting the conflicting desires of wanting people to care while also not wanting them to worry.

For the most part, I don’t much care what strangers think of me. I can share thoughts and feelings anonymously on twitter or tumblr or where-ever without much concern. I can give talks at conferences without undue levels of terror (I mean, there’s always SOME terror, this is me after all), because I know I will never see most of these people again. But I balk at the idea of telling some of these things to people I really know, people I will have to face. Hell, half the time I cannot even stand the idea of letting a friend or colleague read something I wrote – no matter how much I trust that friend or colleague. The room full of conference attendees doesn’t matter. YOU all do. And so I cannot stand to face judgment, even the gentlest and kindest of judgments. Mine is a very fragile ego, all told. I have low self-esteem even on my best days. And let’s be honest, the last few years have not been my best days.

A few years ago, I started an anonymous blog for the expressed purpose of writing about my depression and my bad days. I very carefully avoided any possibility of my name being attached to it. Created a new email address for it, used no names, never mentioned it to a single friend, did not share links on social media. The people who found it, who found me there, were people who identified with the topics, the subject matter, the tags I used. I stopped posting there ages ago (abandoning a blog for not the first time). It’s still there though. I didn’t delete it. But no, I will not tell you what it was called or how to find it. There are still things on that blog I could never stand certain people to read. Ever.

All that being said, I have decided to try this again. This public blogging thing. Obviously. Being as open and honest I can stand to be.

To Blog or Not to Blog

Posted on by
Reply
Photo by Mr Cup / Fabien Barral on Unsplash

Blogs. Their boom has mostly come and gone. When I was writing my first (and only marginally successful) blog in 2010-2013 it was already reaching its peak, its saturation point. In 2011 there were approximately 174 million individual blogs published on the internet. I have yet to find a useful statistic for number of blogs still currently active as of 2019, but the fervor seems to have died down. Most people have moved on to micro-blogging on Twitter and Instagram, and posting videos on TikTok. And, though I have only anecdotal evidence, it seems even fewer people are still READING blogs than writing them.

Even I have fallen out of the habit of reading blogs consistently. There are several I used to follow religiously that I have forgotten about over the last three or four years. Still, I like blogs. Sometimes you need the long-form space to really discuss an idea or an opinion or make an argument in ways that Twitter, even a long Twitter thread, doesn’t really allow for. On this note, brilliant author, hilarious Twitter-ite, and all-around awesome person Chuck Wendig (if you don’t follow him, you really should!) make a great argument in favor of returning to the lost art of blog-writing on HIS blog (pretty much the only one I still read even semi-regularly) here: “Old Man Blogs at Cloud.”

I won’t repeat all the points Chuck Wendig makes in his post, but it boils down to: a) it’s something YOU own, unlike the “evil empires” of Facebook and Twitter and the like, b) it allows for more and better writing, and c) it can be good for your “brand” as a professional (in Wendig’s case, as an author, but in other professions as well).

Thus, I am here. Again. Trying to start and (hopefully) maintain a blog. Again.

As the name of the blog “Night Forest Books” might imply, I hope this blog will often (though not always) be about books. Books I’m reading, books I loved as a child, books I recommend whole-heartedly, etc. I also have an Instagram account called @night.forest.books which is a bookstagram account (ie, I take pretty photos of books). Hypothetically, all of this is a stepping stone to my big-huge-ambitious-probably-won’t-happen goal, which is to open my own science fiction/fantasy bookstore called Night Forest Books and Coffee (because how do resist attaching a little coffee shop to a bookstore?). In the meantime, I have this.

This blog will probably also feature discussions of my other obsessions: movies, anime, all things Disney… maybe NASA, maybe music? And will likely, because I am trying to be more open and honest, often feature posts about my personal life. I will try not to let this blog turn into a place to whine at strangers, but… *shrug* If I feel like sharing, I will.