Jotting through June

Today’s post deals with the more technical aspects of writing, so if you’re a fan of behind-the-scenes type content, you’re going to love this.

When I was thirteen years old, I unofficially participated in NaNoWriMo, or National Novel Writing Month. I say “unofficially” because technically, NaNoWriMo is an organization with a website that you can register on and post your progress. I never did that. Part of me is glad that I never officially participated, because the official challenge is to write 50,000 words in a month, and I only wrote 30,000. (Given that I was thirteen and also a high school freshman at a new private school, I’m quite proud of that number.) Those thirty thousand words eventually grew into Where the Clouds Catch Fire.

That was a full decade ago, and I have never since attempted a writing challenge. The NaNoWriMo organization has garnered some negative attention from the writing community (I’m not sure what for) and an increasing number of authors are choosing not to associate with it. Luckily, I’ve found another community of writers hosting a challenge. This is a community with a message I believe in, and so far, every interaction I’ve had with them has been positive and uplifting.

This organization is called Write for Life, and they are a pro-life writing organization. It is simply an online community for authors, formed “after a writing organization we administrators enjoyed came out in support of abortion” (as per their website). I’m still new to the community so I don’t know everything about them, but I’ve been following their Twitter page for several months now, and they ask a lot of fun questions that give me an excuse to talk about my books and characters.

I also appreciate their message. While I don’t often discuss this publicly, I was adopted as a newborn. I’m of the firm belief that my right to exist is a fundamental and inalienable right, not simply conferred on me because my birth mother decided I was worthy of it. The same goes for my sister–she’s a person, not a choice.

That said, Write for Life has a website, a Twitter page, and a Discord if you’d like to check them out further. They also host periodic writing challenges. The one that I am participating in is called Jotting through June. Unlike NaNoWriMo, authors get to set their own goals. I have decided to make the ambitious goal of writing 40,000 words in the month of June–I figure that, if I can write 30k as a high school junior, I can do more than that as a teacher on summer break. Additionally, since my fantasy WIP is currently around 75k words, this 40k should bring my rough draft to a completed length of just over 100k words. (While none of my historical fiction books have reached the 100k-word mark, this is very common for fantasy books. It is the approximate length of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. For further reference, The Fellowship of the Ring is 178k, and the original Game of Thrones book has almost 300k.)

That said, between this and a few other things going on in my life (my sister’s birthday is in June, and I have a trip planned at the end of the month) I might not get as many blog posts out as I’d like. My goal for July is to write as many blog posts as possible and schedule them to be automatically released during the school year, so be patient! There’s a lot of good content coming your way.

Any advice for staying focused and motivated during June? Let me know in the comments below! God bless you, dear readers, and don’t forget to review us on Amazon!