Wednesday, November 1, 2017

IWSG: NaNoWriMo & the WEP Encouragement Award


Hello and Happy November!!  Today is the day for the monthly meeting of The Insecure Writer's Support Group, founded by our Ninja Captain Alex J. Cavanaugh. To view list members and this month's co-hosts, visit the IWSG page here.


Each month the IWSG team asks a question for participants to answer if desired. This month's question is: Win or not, do you usually finish your NaNo project? Have any of them gone on to be published?

I've only participated in NaNo twice and I finished once and didn't even make it through the first week the second time. The novel I finished went on to be published as The Ghosts of Aquinnah. Last year I signed up determined to work on my story inspired by my trip to France called A Window Box in Paris. That went nowhere, to say the least. 

Now I'm participating a third time and I'm once again planning to write A Window Box in Paris. But I think I will have very different results this year as the story is totally different! Only the title and two characters remain from last year's ideas. I was never totally sold on the story I was trying to write last year but this one feels like it wants to be written. 


And, I got a wonderful surprise and a burst of inspiration when I won the Encouragement Award for the October WEP challenge!! 🙌😃 My story, The Apartment, was connected to A Window Box in Paris and featured one of the main characters as a child. I never intended to write anything about the character's childhood until I started trying to think of ideas for the October hop. The way the piece came together makes me think the full story is meant to be told. 

So I'm excited for NaNo and feeling confident that I'll have a repeat of my first experience instead of my second one. 

Best of luck to everyone else who is participating! 😃😄