Rochelle Bradley Author

In 2002 my maternal grandmother passed away suddenly and as the only woman in my family without a sewing machine, it was decided that I should have hers. I had never really used a sewing machine but accepted it as a material connection to a woman I admire and miss daily. A few days after receiving the machine I just up and decided to make a signature quilt for my mom’s upcoming 50 th birthday. Did I mention that I had never so much as threaded a sewing machine, had no idea how to make a quilt, and her birthday was less than six months away? Yeah, that’s how I do. There is something about crafty things – I jump in with both feet without really looking. It’s also how I have amassed a large collection of hobbies and crafts! And that is how I’ve come to NaNoWriMo. I have no plan , except I will write 1667 words per day for the month of November, am committed to attending at least one write-in per week (Please say hi if you see me at one!), and will do most of my writing under th...

I’ve known about NaNoWriMo for awhile now. Maybe ten years. Maybe less. I signed up for an account six years ago, but I never participated until last year. I thought maybe I was finally ready. I’ve written two novels. I have a collection of short stories I’ve written. I know what it takes to complete a novel and I wanted to finish my current WIP, so I thought NaNoWriMo would be the perfect opportunity to do so. I started out strong. But I failed. I failed hard. I don’t remember how many words I ended up with last year. All I know is that failing NaNo stung a lot more than I thought it would. And yeah. You’re going to feel bummed if you do fail. But you’re starting a novel. Do you know how many people want to be an author? Some statistics say up to 90% of Americans want to write a novel. But how many actually do? And you, fellow WriMo, are one of the few who did pick up a pen (or open up a word processor) and you started writing. Failing NaNoWriMo shouldn’t discourage ...

Official NaNo name/region: bhoney, Dayton Title of 2016 NaNo project and genre:  Breakout, YA horror How many years have you participated? I have done NaNo 5 times and Camp NaNo 8 times. How did you find out about writing for NaNo? I’d heard other writers talking about NaNo, but didn’t really know what it was. I finally decided to look it up and see what all the fuss was about and knew I had to give it a try. Of course, that was like 2 days before NaNo started so I didn’t have much time to prepare, but I decided just to dive in and hope for the best! LOL I get asked a lot what advice I would give aspiring writers. My biggest advice is to find out what method works for you, whether you’re a plotter (someone who outlines and plans it all out before starting) or a pantser (someone who writes by the seat of their pants and discovers what’s going to happen as it goes) or a mixture of the two. Either way, I find the most motivating thing for actually finishing a project—wh...

Nanowrimo name :    dkblinux98 Title & genre of 2016 project :    Seventy Six Falls (Thalia Chase: Sex Therapist, Book Two), LGBT+ Years participated :  This is my first year participating. I’ve not ever done the camp. How did you find out about Nano?     I found out about Nano through Literature & Latte’s Scrivener application, which is absolutely the best writing software ever! I published Book One in the Thalia Chase: Sex Therapist series on June 11, 2016. When the idea for the series came to me last November, I had everything neatly planned out. I would release book one, Eagle Cove in June. I would release book two, Seventy Six Falls, in September, three in April 2017 and four in September 2017. Writing Eagle Cove had been easy. It never occurred to me I would struggle with Seventy Six Falls. I moved the release to November, scheduled my editor, and my audio performance artist, and continued to delude myself ...

• Official Nano name : Leslie the Inkweaver • Title of 2016 nano project & genre : The Amazon Triangle (Urban Fantasy) • How many years have you participated? This will be my 6th year! • How did you find out about writing for Nano? When I was doing college online, a few other students were participating, and at the time I don't think I was writing 50K in a single story, much less a month. I started tracking my word count and just experimenting with writing every day, and I had so much fun that the next opportunity (two years later... Because my second attempt "accidentally" happened in October...) I actually registered, and I've been doing it officially ever since! • What is your favorite part of Nano? My favorite part is the camaraderie and community that it brings out over writing. I am meeting people in my area and making connections all over the world (via the Facebook group) by being a part of NaNoWriMo. • Strategy or tip for maki...

Hi.  My name is Shari. My Nano name is Archadia, and I write Christian Fiction. I joined NaNo in 2011 after my husband passed away. It had been several months, and I was looking for ways to express myself/find myself, get out of the house, and meet new people. A friend had told me about this a couple of years before, but I had too much on my plate. In 2011, my daughter asked me if I wanted to do this with her and I jumped at the opportunity. Unfortunately, I had made too many commitments, and nano was the first to go. I didn't come close to my goal, and just kind of forgot about it over the next few years. Life got in the way again, but I was always journaling.  One day in 2015, I was going through my journals and came across this document without a title.  I read it and thought, "wow! This is really good!  I wonder who wrote it and how it got in my google docs?"  Slowly, it came back to me that it was the piece I had started in...

Sitting at my computer, staring at this little blinking cursor, I’m reminded of a few fun facts about myself. First, the genre that flows best for me is Fantasy, and while writing in my chosen genre, I can hold my own when given an assignment of sorts. But give me the task of crafting a blog post, something that’s both creative and non-fiction, well… that’s when my confidence waivers. I won’t go into how many times the backspace key’s been hit or how many different evolutions this posting has seen. Second, I have a weird username for my NaNoWriMo account. Starchampion. It certainly is not your typical name for an online presence. I’d like to think it was created back when I was such a newbie at creating an online persona and didn’t know any better. Now, well, I guess I keep it for nostalgia. Third fun fact, I write. Yeah, I know we all write , but I mean it in the literal sense. When I wield my craft, I do so with a pencil and a spiral-bound notebook. I’d like to think, that bei...

National Novel Writing Month healed me. If you ask the Dayton, Ohio, NaNo group, those who know me likely consider me a prolific writer.  I can hammer out seven hundred words in a fifteen-minute word war and have little problem writing fifty thousand words in less than three weeks.  I'm focused and intense, man! But I didn't always live in Dayton.  For the previous three years before my first NaNo, I lived in Miami, Florida.  It was the most consistently miserable time in my adult life.  I felt trapped, I didn't have many friends, I didn't want to go anywhere.  While I was in Miami, I finished a couple of short stories, but that's all.  Prolific?  Pshaw.  I'd be lucky to write at all in the course of a month.  I was seriously concerned that I had lost the ability to write, lost the magic that allowed me to express myself in words, and was trying to adjust to the idea that I wasn't a writer, after all.  It was a rough adjust...

Sleep “E” here, working to finalize Taking Chances, a creative non-fiction. This will be my 2nd year of NaNoWriMo . I love NaNo because it gives me the avenue to focus and hone the craft I love. I'm a writer. I write. It's what I do. Last year was my first year. I was nervous about the commitment, and whether or not I could write 50,000 words in a month. Turns out, I only wrote 25,000 words...MORE than I would have written otherwise. A close friend, Danny Rodriguez, put me on to NaNo and what he was able to accomplish through it. I'm grateful he shared the opportunity with me. And I'm grateful to have met Rochelle and the spectacular team of writers and writing she helped cultivate leading the Dayton NaNoWrimo group ! The encouragement through the Write-Ins, Word Wars, and wotivation (trying to keep the alliteration going) is simply amazing and keeps us inspired through deadlines, schedules, and carpal tunnel

A friend of mine told me about Nanowrimo and I was instantly sold. That year, I didn't have a novel in mind, so I tried doing a picture prompt every day. I didn't make my 50k that time, but a lot of really interesting stories spilled out and I wrote a lot of things I didn't know I was capable of (I also discovered that sometimes writing a little poem is a great kick-off for a sprint!) A few years later in 2013, I got all riled up about Nano again and this time I had a novel in mind. I had been watching Star Trek TNG and getting into old-school Sci-fi. Following a prompt, I wrote a novel about a man who finds an alien, throws it in the water, ends up at a government research facility, and later discovers his very strange connection to said alien. Like any good story, it took me on a ride and went places I never dreamed of. As far as making my goal? Well, you always start off on-task in the beginning. Then you hit a wall, such as unexpectedly moving your story twenty...

When writing, you're going to get stuck.  You'll be sitting at your computer or your notepad, and you'll wonder "what happens next?" My A#1 writing buddy, Her Imperial Highness, Princess Irulan It is my experience that many of you will wait for inspiration.  You'll want for a white-limbed goddess to whisper something into your ear that thrills you, fires your soul, makes your mind race.  Then, only then, will you rush to your place of work and the words will flow from your fingertips like wine into a glass. However, muses are fickle, and you've got a deadline. The most practical advice, then, that I can give is: kill your muse .  She'll try to talk you out of it; do not listen.  She'll beseech and beg; ignore her.  Others will plead on her behalf; reject them.  Take your muse out back, put a gun to her head, and scatter her brains on the ground.  Then leave her face down in a ditch for the badgers and coyotes, return to your place...

When I'm wearing the hat, don't bother me - it's NaNo time! Hello! I’m zenWriter42. I haven’t committed to NaNo 2016…yet. I’m juggling what amounts to four part-time jobs right now, including teaching four college writing classes, and the hours just aren’t there. But s ince I first discovered National Novel Writing Month in 2005, after reading Chris Baty’s No Plot, No Problem! , I’ve been a devoted fan and evangelist. My 2005 NaNo effort became the basis for my creative writing thesis; my 2006 draft, after many rewrites, edits and revisions, was released by Deadly Writes Publishing as my debut novel Forty & Out in 2014. In addition, I’ve published a number short stories, several anthologized personal essays , and a non-fiction history book . NaNo was not the end for me, only the beginning. It gave me the confidence to push forward with my writing, knowing I really could finish a novel-length manuscript. After a few years’ hiatus to finish college (unde...

Hi All!  My name is Amy, but I am known in the land of NanoWriMo as Ismenia.  This is my 10 th year of doing Nano, plus I did my first Camp this summer.  I have won every single time, which I am quite proud of.  I started doing Nano because of my dear friend, Nicole Amsler.  Some of you might know her.  She lived in the Dayton Area up until about 3 years ago, and did quite a few Write-Ins with the Dayton crowd.  She talked me into doing it on Nov. 4 th , so I was behind on my word count from the very beginning!  It was probably the hardest and most rewarding thing I had ever done.  Before I knew it, it was ten years later.   I have always been the creative sort.  I was an art therapy major in college.  I never considered myself a writer, but liked to dabble in poetry and short stories.  I see writing as a way of painting with words, which is far less expensive than buying art supplies.  I write primari...

In February 2013, an idea for a story came to me, in such a rush, that for one month, I did nothing but write. However, by the time November approached, I found excuses for why I couldn't possibly participate in NaNoWriMo: I probably didn't have another story in me; the month kicks off with my son's birthday; we usually have family in town for at least two weekends in November; Thanksgiving—and a week off for the kids—rounds out that month. No way can I write 50,000 words, right? Last fall, though, after urging from one of my writing group members, I decided to shelve the excuses and put on paper the women's fiction that was in my head. Sure, I was busy—who isn't with four children, their activities, my own teaching, editing, and writing group, and life's everyday business? But I found myself with a goal in hand and because of that, I prioritized my writing. And miraculously, everything fell into place: my kids behaved and allowed me time to write; no one c...

Happy 2016 NaNoWriMo season! I’m Kelly Blanchard, known online as the Muse, but on the NaNo site, I’m as Kellannetta, and this is my ninth year to participate in NaNo. This year I’m co-writing a fantasy novel with my boyfriend, which we have temporarily titled ‘The King’s Hand’. Since we’re co-writing, we technically need to write 100,000 words so we will have 50,000 words between the two of us, but we will see what happens! A year before I joined, my mother discovered the NaNoWriMo challenge, and she participated in it. At that time, I was struggling to regain my confidence in writing because I had gone through a breakup. The following year, I had finally established my writing habits and tried the challenge. I haven’t stopped yet, and I’ve won every year. If you’re new to NaNo, here are some tricks I’ve picked up along the way. First, in order to achieve 50,000 words a day in 30 days, you need to write at least 1,667 words every day. However, that is such an odd number, ...

First of all, I’d like to thank Rochelle Bradley for hosting me. It’s a real honor to be included in this awesome project. I really enjoyed her take on blogging about NaNoWriMo last year and look forward to reading what others have to say as November begins. On that note,  as I write this on Halloween, November is only a day away! My project doesn’t even have a title yet. That is extremely unusual for me. Some stories I’ve written progress from the title such as 2013’s “Jimmying the Locke”. The only thing this project has in common is its erotic theme. Or so goes the plan. Plotting ahead is not my style. Nonetheless I have been succeeding under the name Darla M Sands for my Dayton , Ohio USA NaNo region since 2011 and two years with April’s Camp NaNo . Thanks goes to author A. Catherine Noon for initially introducing me in 2010. I admittedly didn’t try then due to fear of failure. That leads to a big piece of advice. Don’t worry overmuch about meeting the word coun...

I began Nano as a critic. I had never been a writer, was never going to be a writer, and had never written anything before. "Just try it," a friend of mine encouraged. Within days I was hooked. Within weeks, I was worried that I didn't have enough planned for 50k words. The bug had set in.   Sarge would rather be gaming I worked diligently to finish the novel, worrying over every detail. Would the plot make sense? Would the events I had set up be enough? Would I actually be able to finish this task I had set out to do?   Nano began to mean more to me than I had intended it to be. What began as a vague attempt is now a yearly challenge to myself to complete. I've had great years and bad years. My shining achievement was probably finishing my one novel idea within the allotted 30 days and ended up being 100k words in 27 days. I don't think I have another novel in me to rival that accomplishment, but I will try every year.    Nano has...