The Past: I've been working towards becoming a person that can say they're a writer without laughing for about six years now; I've read a lot of craft books and worked on my own writing projects during that time, with mixed success. There has been a lot of frustration to go along with my efforts, to date. I periodically cruise the internet and look at MFA programs and online writing classes. I miss the structured learning that schools provide. I already have an MBA and can't justify the expense of going back so I figured I could get the same information by reading how-to books and JUST WRITING. That's what they all say, right? Just write! Unfortunately, I would reference the first five years of my journey as proof that alone doesn't work for everyone. I'll give you an analogy: when you're learning how to hit a baseball, you just have to get up there and swing the bat; eventually you start making contact and it's uphill from there. It's very lin...
The NaNoWriMo organization is dead. I agree with the community that killed it. AI has no place in the creative space and the original NaNoWriMo organization was pushing it as a cash-grab, but I digress. With that being said, I like the idea of National Novel Writing Month. These were the rules: Writing starts at 12:00:00 a.m. on November 1 and ends 11:59:59 p.m. on November 30, local time. No one is allowed to start early and the challenge finishes exactly 30 days from that start point. Novels must reach a minimum of 50,000 words before the end of November in order to win. These words can either be a complete novel of 50,000 words or the first 50,000 words of a novel to be completed later. Planning and extensive notes are permitted, but no material written before the November 1 start date can go into the body of the novel. Participants' novels can be on any theme, genre of fiction, and language. What a challenge! You basically have to write over 1600 words each day in ...