NATIONAL NOVEL WRITING MONTH!!!

Happy NaNoWriMo! Or for the less abbreviated person, Happy National Novel Writing Month!

As many of you may know, this month is dedicated to novel writing. The challenge for the whole month of November is to go from 0-50,000 words and write an entire novel. This is absolutely the most crazy challenge I may ever take part in for my entire life (well...hopeful not, but it sure will be tough).

This is going to be my first year participating in the challenge during NaNoWriMo, but I am excited to give it a try. The worst thing that could happen is I don't reach 50,000 words, but I would still have an amazing start on my novel! There is even a website to help track your progress and keep you motivated!

If you want to learn more about how it all works, you can find that information here.

So, because I am taking part in this challenge, I will not be blogging this whole month. That way, I will be able to focus on completing the challenge.

I hope to hear back from everyone on their progress on Twitter or in the comments section when I get back.

Until next week, keep writing everyone! And for those who are participating in the NaNoWriMo, and I mean this in the nicest possible way...

Weekend in Emily, MN - Emily Day's Event

Last week was a whirlwind of work and summer fun, but I don’t think people want to hear about grant writing (unless you do, just let me know in the comments). For fun, I spent the weekend at my family’s cabin to celebrate Emily Day’s. Emily is a small city in Northern Minnesota that holds an annual celebration that includes a parade, delicious food vendors (GYROS!), artisans, and is capped off with fireworks. The parade is the staple of the event, but I was more interested in the food and artisans.

They had 12-foot tables lined with hats, knives, and other random knick knacks. It had an old-time redneck vibe, but it was really fun to just see all it had to offer. The biggest surprise at the event was a video game re-seller that had the full spectrum of games available from SNES to Xbox One. I did some snooping and found the game, Blitz, which was quite a nostalgia moment for me. What stood out the most at the Emily Day’s event was a self-published author by the name of M.E. Gryffon. What I found odd was she was dressed in a black Chinese dress, which I had only seen worn by Fanny Wong in Shanghai Knights. I took some time to chat with her and decided to support a fellow author. I bought her novel, "Rune of the Guardian" for only $10.

I haven’t read the book yet, but I am interested to see if the novel is a diamond in the rough instead of a just…rough. I looked around online to see if the writer had a website or something and all I could find was a single Goodreads review of three stars. She just launched the book, so I am going to take the review as a potentially positive sign and give it a shot.

Overall, the weekend was a success and I was able to get a lot of uninterrupted writing done. I was away from my normal writing laptop, so I started on a nerdy teen romance short story that I hope to have ready for everyone to read in the monthly newsletter.

If you are interested in reading it, sign-up for the newsletter, otherwise I will post it to the website a few weeks later. -J.J.