I saw this NaNoWriMo tag on The Book’s The Thing and thought I’d play along since I’m clearly obsessed with tags right now – at least this one is about writing instead of just another list of books. And since I’m attempting yet another mad dashed month of writing, this one is super timely. This tag was created by Kristina Horner.

(For those of you who haven’t heard about it, November is National Novel Writing Month, and participants around the globe spend the month consuming large quantities of coffee and chocolate, and attempting to write a 50,000 word draft in 30 days.) 

What was the name of the first novel you attempted with NaNo?

The first novel I have entered in my Nanowrimo profile was called Fly Away. It’s also the only one I’ve finished on time…. shhhhh….. no negative talk about writing in November. Let me rephrase that: I even finished my novel that year! Yay!

Give us a 1 sentence summary of what you’re writing this year.

A funny memoir that talks about mostly embarrassing stories from my childhood but then tries to turn the stories into motivational mushy stuff and relate them to my adult life. Is it cheating that I’m writing nonfiction? Not sure, don’t care.

What’s the best writing advice you’ve ever been given?

I found a great roundup of famous writing advice at Buzzfeed.com. Here are some of my favorites:

Did you ever take a year off from NaNo? Why?

Somehow I seem to talk myself into at least starting every year but I have a poor history with follow through. Last year I only wrote 362 words. That was my poorest showing though – most years I make it to at least 8,000. Some years I’ve gotten nearly halfway to the finish line. Fingers crossed that I can finally finish another one this year. Or at least write some great stuff.

What’s your biggest inspiration when figuring out what to write?

Dreams and music. Most of my story ideas come from crazy dreams and from great songs. Taylor Swift in particular has a tendency to do such great story telling in her music that my brain is constantly compelled to finish the stories and flesh them out until they become these big spectacular sagas in my mind. Most of my story ideas are just my brain saying, “But what happened next?”

Read us the first sentence from one of your novels.

“Fires blazed across the water, creating a rippling gold wave that flickered and glittered, waning occasionally with the flames, then roaring back to life seconds later.” – from my 2011 NaNo attempt

Why do you love writing?

I love stories in all forms from music to movies to television to coffee with friends. Writing lets me scratch the itch of “what happens next” and “what if” – it takes the crazy thoughts in my head and freezes them in time and makes sense out of the white noise in my mind.

Are you doing NaNoWriMo this month? Consider yourself tagged!