1. Video: NaNoWriMo Pep Talk!

    October 9, 2013 ♥ Posted in: Geek Events, Writing, YouTube videos by Kristina Horner

    In addition to being in up to my eyeballs in Halloween party planning and putting together another epic 24 hour live show for Extra Life – I’ve also got the pre NaNoWriMo jitters something fierce. We’re still three weeks out, but I find it creeping into the back of my mind pretty regularly already. What am I going to write? How am I going to make the time? Is anyone going to do it with me?

    That’s why I decided to post a pep talk video early this year, to make sure those of you on the fence about it have ample time to mull it over. Here is that video!

     

    I will likely be posting more videos to help participants along this year, as well as hosting my usual word sprints on twitter. Make sure you’re following me if you want to join in the fun!

    I’ll also be heading down to San Francisco for the Night of Writing Dangerously – it’s a gala/write-a-thon they throw every year to raise money for their organization (as well as their free creative writing programs in hundreds of schools and communities all over the place), which I am all about supporting. I am trying to raise $500, which is minuscule compared to the amount this project has done for me over the years. If you’re interested in donating, here’s a link to my funding page.

    How do you decide what to write each year? Usually I start with format – do I want to write a “diary” book? First person? Letters between people? Back and fort POV between two characters? Then I figure out the genre I’m interested in, and then start to flesh out the details. Let me know your methods in the comments!

     

    And as usual, if you get stuck, you can always rewatch my NaNoWriMo music video. It’ll be trapped in your head for days, at the very least. 🙂

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  2. Why NaNoWriMo is Important to Me

    October 2, 2013 ♥ Posted in: Geek Events, Journal, Writing by Kristina Horner

    nanowrimo

    This will be my eighth year participating in NaNoWriMo. I sort of can’t believe it. I remember so vividly how I found out about it and honestly, it feels like no time has passed… but in fact, seven novels worth of time have passed since that day (and here I am mentally preparing for number eight).

    I was at home in my bedroom at my parent’s house. This is really embarrassing to admit, but I had this “friend” on AIM that I had never spoken with, but kept her on my buddy list because I thought her away messages and buddy profile were funny. I don’t even entirely remember, but I think she was a fanfiction author I had admired but never worked up the courage to say hello to. It was 2005; I was 17 years old, give me a break. Around the time of November, her away messages starting referencing this project she was working on, something called NaNoWriMo. After a few days my curiosity got the best of me and I finally clicked the link.

    What I found on the other end quite literally changed my life.

    I wrote a lot of fanfiction in middle school and high school. I had always loved writing, and fanfiction seemed like the only way to get other people interested in reading your words. People love hearing about what new capers Harry, Ron and Hermione got themselves into – so I wrote my crappy fanfiction – and people read it. It was a beautiful thing. But as I got older, I didn’t just want to use other people’s characters. I tried my foray into fictionpress.com (fanfiction.net’s sister site for original works) and people just didn’t care. It was disheartening. It made me want to stop writing.

    But then I found NaNoWriMo. A site dedicated to encouraging writers to do what they were meant to do: WRITE. Constantly. For a whole month.

    I will preface this by saying that even after seven novel attempts, I still haven’t shared much of my work with any other living, breathing humans – but that wasn’t the point of NaNoWriMo for me. While I craved the comments and feedback on my fanfiction, NaNoWriMo made writing a whole new animal for me… rather than a solitary task I did alone in my bedroom against the protest of my mom who wanted me to come out and actually interact with people sometimes. Suddenly NaNoWriMo gave me not only a supportive community of other writers to talk with and gain encouragement from, but it managed to somehow turn my favorite lonely solo activity into a sport. One where people root for each other!

    It’s been such a positive force in my life, even when it means I am ignoring plans with friends, falling behind in TV shows, or working myself into a stupor. It’s the kind of exhaustion you earn after a job well done, and I look forward to it year after year. I learned that writing is much less about those immediate comments you receive on fanfiction.net, but about cultivating the skills required to take on such a gargantuan task on your own. About learning discipline, and powering through something even when it seems impossible, and how good it feels when inspiration truly hits.

    I recommend NaNoWriMo to anyone who has ever had even the smalled nugget of an idea for a story in their brains. If you want to follow my progress in the coming months, here’s my profile. And if you’re at all interested in helping out the nonprofit behind this wonderful event, I’m raising money for their annual gala on my personal fundraising page here.

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