5 Tips for a Successful NaNoWriMo

With November fast approaching it’s time to prep for NaNoWriMo once again. What’s NaNoWriMo? It’s short for National Novel Writing Month, a writing challenge that encourages participants to write 50,000 words in the 30 days of November. Although the idea of undertaking such a challenge can be quite intimidating, here are five tips to help you improve your chances of making it to the finish line:

Big in Japan: A Review of the April 2015 Japan Crate

Earlier this week I received my very first Japan Crate.  Yay!!!  I ordered it back in March and had been awaiting its arrival with eager anticipation for weeks.  What is Japan Crate?  It’s a monthly subscription service that provides subscribers with a generous assortment of Japanese candy delivered right to their doors.   Or, as the official website puts it, “Crazy Japanese Candy, Hand Selected, Starting from $12/Month.”  There are three different subscription levels: Mini ($12/month), Original ($25/month), and Premium ($30/month).  Of course, crazy otaku that I am, I had to get the premium subscription.

Now, I’ve had Japanese snacks before.  I’ve eaten various kinds of Pocky and have hoarded Ramune soda in my fridge for months (okay, years) at a time.  But that’s pretty much been my limit.  Oh, except for the Panda cookies I had to give up after watching Episode 25 of Death Note.  (They were just too depressing to eat after that.  I couldn’t eat them without thinking of L.)  So, I went into this little experiment knowing I would enjoy it, but having little idea of what to expect.  And now that I have sampled every last item in my box (As evidenced by the above picture.  Everything is open and nearly gone.), I can say I was not disappointed.

Each Japan Crate box comes with a full-color, laminated card featuring a comic on one side and an itemization of the included snacks on the other.   Each month, subscribers are sent a new assortment of mystery items.  I have scanned the list for the April 2015 box and broken it down for illustrative purposes below. Please read the item description before the review.

Let's Try This Again

I find it rather disheartening that I haven’t posted anything in this blog since November of last year.  (It’s been more than five months!)  Back in November I had every intention of blogging my way through NaNoWriMo, posting every day - or at least every other day - about my story, my word count, and the general ins and outs of writing 100k words in 30 days.  Well, writing 100k words in 30 days got the best of me and I gave up blogging after day eight.  I did, in fact, finish my NaNo novel, Captive Princess.  I still haven’t had time to read it through, but I was generally satisfied with the story.  I think it makes a nice companion for my 2013 Nano novel, Taming the Savage.

One of the reasons I haven’t posted in a while is because I was getting rather frustrated with the whole blogging thing.  I’m a writer.  I’m hoping to be a published writer someday soon.  And because of that, I had convinced myself that everything in my blog needed to be writing related.  It’s hard to relate every single thing I like or experience to how it affects me as a writer.  And so, I became both frustrated and disenchanted with blogging.  Then, a couple of weeks ago, I attended the Long Island Romance Writers open house and learned something extremely valuable from the panel of published authors present.  Writers seeking publication do not always need to blog about writing.  It’s perfectly okay – in fact, it’s more than okay – to write about your personal interests because it’s a good way to connect with readers on a personal level.   It may sound naïve of me, but I honestly didn’t know that.  Sometimes I take this whole writing-as-a-career-thing so seriously that I forget that it’s okay to still be human, to express more than just my love of the written word, and to share all of myself with the world and not just one part.

So, what does all this mean?  It means that, henceforth, I plan to blog about all sorts of things – even things that have absolutely nothing to do with writing!  It will give me a chance to branch out a bit, to get more comfortable with the medium, and to actually start enjoying the experience.