Hey guys, it's November! Can you believe it? Because I can't. Time is going so fast.
Anyways, November means so many different things for me, like exams! sweater weather! beautiful park walks with all the fallen leaves!
But most of all November 2016 for me means NaNoWriMo.
For those of you who don't know what NaNoWriMo is, it "is an annual, Internet-based creative writingproject that takes place during the month of November. NaNoWriMo challenges participants to write 50,000 words (the minimum number of words for a novel) from November 1 until the deadline at 11:59PM on November 30. The goal of NaNoWriMo is to get people writing and keep them motivated throughout the process" (yes, I just copied + pasted this from Wikipedia).
I have participated in NaNoWriMo last year, or more like, tried to. I wrote 256 words overall. Yep, I failed big time. My mistake last year was not planning anything and editing the first 200 words I wrote over and over again.
This year I swore to be better, and you know what? This year's NaNoWriMo has been amazing so far!
Not only have I reached a total of 16,359 words in 9 days, but I also met a couple of amazing new people. We motivate each other, share our stories, thoughts and talking to each other is so much fun. I'm having such a great time, and I'm loving my novel so far!
You know the advice "Write the book you want to read"? Well, that's exactly what I am doing.
Those of you who may be interested in my novel, basically, it's an YA dystopia novel, but without any paranormal or fantasy elements. It's about a bunch of teenagers trying to survive. I don't want to give away too many details, because I don't know how to actually summarise it yet.
Buuuuuut, I can say that there's a lot of diversity going on in my book. Which is actually a thing so many are doing. Like, all my friends who are doing NaNoWriMo try to include as many POC characters as possible. We also write about not heterosexual or cisgender characters and we write about characters with mental health problems.
It's something I noticed this year about the novels. I guess we all are tired about the never-ending white girl/white boy stories, because seriously, I haven't read enough books with POC and queer characters, or that are dealing with mental disorders.
We are craving such stories, so we took the thing in our hands and started writing them.
And I can't be more happy.
Something I also noticed is, that writing my first book is more personal than I thought. I putting so much of myself into this book, especially into these characters. And it really helps me to deal with some of my own issues and problems.
Something I also noticed is, that writing my first book is more personal than I thought. I putting so much of myself into this book, especially into these characters. And it really helps me to deal with some of my own issues and problems.
Anyways, I'm so excited with what everyone has come up with, and I can't wait to see how everyone is doing. I'm sure some really great books are being written right now!
What about you? Are you participating in NaNoWriMo? I'd love to talk about it. (By the way, my NaNoWriMo name is Maggi Pleskach, if anyone wants to add me.)
