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Thursday, October 16, 2014

NaNoWriMo 2014 (National Novel Writing Month)

Hello dear Readers,

I was not able to post much in the last weeks and I apologize for that. I have been busy taking care of my husband who recently had a knee surgery and we recently adopted a dog. His name is Ike, a golden retriever, one year and a half. He is adorable, handsome, sweet and smart. Yes, he has been keeping us busy but we love him very much. He has brought so much happiness into our lives in such short period of time and of course I felt like I needed to write about it. Some of the pages I wrote in the last few weeks will be included in the draft I am finishing of my Memoir and speaking of writing, yeahh, NaNoWriMo 2014 is coming very soon. 15 days and the fun will be back.

Sometimes I feel kind of crazy and ask myself: "Why am I so excited about this?" Then, I remember, hey, is NaNoWriMo, this is about writing, having fun and getting things done.

I discovered NaNo last year. I did not even know it existed. One day checking the web site of my local library, they had a post about NaNo. It talked about how people were getting ready for it and what activities were planned for people here in Idaho. write-ins, the launch party, etc. I clicked on the link included on that post and that is how I learned what NaNo was about. All this happened like 3 weeks before it started.

At the beginning I thought I was not going to be able to do it. 50000 words in one month, meaning I had to write at least almost 1700 words a day, it sounded totally insane at the moment. I was struggling to write 500 a day, not every day. Why I would want to add almost 1200 to the struggle? I asked myself. Then, I realized how wrong I was. First of all, I was looking at writing as a struggle, something bad, and not something I was passionate about. It was a period in my life that I did not know what I wanted to do. I had been writing poetry for too long and for a long time I thought about writing a fiction novel but every time I started it, it was a disaster. I was writing because I felt like I had to not because I wanted to. And that is something I always will thank NaNo for. It made realize that even if I dont feel like doing it, writing does not have to be a struggle. I understood that if I wanted to write and not just "want to be a writer", I needed to write, at least a few words a day. Writing is hard, its true, but it can be fun. Winning NaNo is awesome. Having your winner certificate, your winner T-Shirt, all that is great but even if you do not wing, knowing that you wrote at least a few words every day, for 30 days, I can tell you, right there is what makes you a 'I'm a writer" and not just a "I want to be a writer".

I won last year. It helped me to start what today is my first draft and hopefully, I will be able to finish it this year. I am very positive that it will happen.

I had so much fun doing NaNoWriMo last year. I can't hardly wait for November. Last year I went to some of the write-ins they organized, met new people and at the end of the month we even had a celebration party. I really enjoyed it.

Thanks to NaNo I discovered Scrivener, an awesome computer's software for writers which has made writing on the computer much easier and organized for me.

If you want to know more about NaNoWriMo and how to participate, click in the link below.

http://nanowrimo.org/

Have fun guys and keep writing, reading, and living.

Wen






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