Back in August, I got an email from NaNoWriMo (that's National Novel Writing Month ) organizers, inviting me to guest-blog for them. The theme was writing tips and/or motivation, but it was open to interpretation. I quickly said 'yes, please' (that's my usual tactic where writing is concerned) and got to work. The use of visuals for inspiration and motivation emerged as a topic for me to write about and NaNoWriMo folks liked my pitch. So here's me reblogging this piece (all images are licensed under Creative Commons and you can find details in image captions on the original posting available here ). I'd like to thank NaNoWriMo for reaching out and for running my guest-post on their blog. Can a picture inspire a thousand words? Can a picture inspire a thousand words? NaNoWriMo investigates the power of images in our writing lives. Author Katya de Becerra describes how using an image board brought her novel’s setting to life: For me, a book begins...

For all intents and purposes, I failed at my 2014 NaNoWriMo attempt. There, I had to say it. The most important thing I learnt (or rather had confirmed for myself) as a result of this experience was that it is an unrealistic expectation to come up with a coherent piece of 50,000-words-long work of fiction in a month without doing any planning . But here's another thing I learnt: no time is ever wasted writing. Every idea, every thought that goes through your head and ends up on paper, has a potential for something more. Many successful books have started as NaNo projects, after all. So, let's deconstruct my 'failure' (or was it really failure?) and make a lesson out of it. Back in 2014, when I decided I was going to do NaNo, it was an impulsive decision as well as an attempt at creative procrastination: at the time I was already deep in revisions on another project and was starting to query another novel I considered 'ready' for that stage of the writin...

Some thoughts on my NaNoWriMo 2014 experiences so far... I was under impression that November was supposed to start on Monday (yeah, sad time-keeping skills, I know...), so instead of getting my word count up during the past weekend I was working on one of my other projects (that is, I was doing one of the big 'No-Nos' of the NaNoWriMo - cheating on my NaNo novel with another novel.) So Monday comes and I realize I'm behind by 2 days already, so I quickly jump in, trying to catch up and all. NaNo is stressful , but in a good way, I guess, as it opens one's eyes to the greety sweaty bits of the writing process. Apparently, quite a few best-sellers out there have started out as NaNo projects (what comes to mind: WOOL ; THE NIGHT CIRCUS ; THE DARWIN ELEVATOR )... Glitches... Having trouble updating my word count - everything works so slowly or doesn't work at all via Chrome, so I start using Firefox again, just to get the NaNo website to work.  NaNo...