Motivation

How to Win NaNoWriMo

October 25, 2017 // 0 Comments

pink letters fall from the fridge to the floor

So you’ve decided to do it. Every November, during National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo, for short), hundreds of thousands of writers across the globe pledge their fealty to the writer gods and commit to writing a novel in one month. 50,000 words in 30 days. 1667 per day. And I’m not going to lie to you. It’s hard. Really hard. But you can do it. I know this because I’ve done it. In the past two years, I’ve gone from writing as an occasional hobby to punching out over half a //

Why NaNoWriMo Works for Me

November 2, 2016 // 0 Comments

As many of us already know, the first step in becoming, as they say, a “real” writer is to, well… write. Not write when the mood strikes, not “tomorrow,” not when you have some time off. To write (and to write well) involves a consistent effort. A daily regimen. The flexing of a muscle. Writing is a practice. And what better time to begin that practice than National Novel Writing Month? NaNoWriMo is an annual novel-writing project taken on by professional and amateur writers //

How I Met My Fiancé by Writing Fanfiction

October 22, 2015 // 2 Comments

I started writing fanfiction at the age of fourteen, because I saw my sister doing it and I wanted to try it too. At age sixteen, when anime was just starting to become popular in the UK and I was getting involved in online fan culture, I started writing a fanfiction based on the English dub of Beyblade. (We didn’t have a lot of choice for what anime to watch in Britain back then.) It was a self-insert fic about my “Mary-Sue” character moving to New York—a glamorous city to a //

Five Psychological Benefits of Writing Fanfiction

October 21, 2015 // 5 Comments

In 2009 I began writing fanfiction as a means to jumpstart my creative process. I was so in love with the characters of the anime I was addicted to (Yu Yu Hakusho, by the way) that I wanted desperately for there to be more of their adventures and world than the complete series offered me. Burning through the entire series in two weeks’ only left that hunger festering. I was writing the first draft of a novel at the time, in between jobs and attending college. When I could no longer fill my //

How Writing Fanfiction Changed My Life

October 20, 2015 // 5 Comments

It’s hard to even know where to start. I can tell you with all sincerity that I would not be sitting here as a professional writer without fanfiction. To say that it merely influenced my life would be a drastic understatement. Writing fanfiction changed my life. It helped me realize an identity that was already waiting for me, the role of wordsmith. I didn’t have much going for me when I first started writing. I was homeschooled after being bullied out of my last school. I was lonely, a bit //