The Kobo Writing Life team is excited to announce our latest Live Q&A on October 22nd 2020. From 12:00 PM-1:00 PM EST, our takeover guest, NaNoWriMo Executive Director Grant Faulkner, will be answering all your questions on the Kobo Writing Life Facebook and YouTube pages. If you can’t make the takeover, feel free to comment on this post with your questions and we can ask them for you! Keep reading to learn more about Grant and NaNoWriMo.
NaNoWriMo, aka, National Novel Writing Month, takes place November 1st-30th. Writers sign up to challenge themselves to write a 50,000 word novel in 30 days. Participants join from all over the world, with writers on all seven continents and over 200 countries. In 2019 over 455,080 writers participated in their programs, including 104,350 students and educators in the Young Writers Program. Past NaNo novels include published novels such as Sara Gruen’s Water for Elephants, Erin Morgenstern’s The Night Circus, Hugh Howey’s Wool, Rainbow Rowell’s Fangirl, Jason Hough’s The Darwin Elevator, and Marissa Meyer’s Cinder.
NaNoWrimo also creates a community for writers, and connects people all over the world through their author forums and write-ins. This year, the Kobo Writing Life team will be joining writers to take on the NaNoWriMo challenge from home, and running weekly virtual write-ins every Wednesday in November. If you’re interested in participating, you can sign up here. We’ll work together to stay motivated and hold each other accountable.
Our first NaNoWriMo event will begin ahead of our November 1st start date, with our live Q&A with NaNo’s Executive Director Grant Faulkner on October 22nd. Grant is an author himself and has been part of the NaNoWriMo team for a few years now. He has written novels during NaNoWriMo since 2009, so you could call him a true NaNo veteran. One of his most popular books, Pep Talks for Writers, is full of essays and helpful tips to kickstart your writing journey and provide motivation and encouragement for writers of all levels.
He was inspired to write the book after hearing from many authors who were galvanized by writing in November but had trouble staying motivated year-round. One of his goals in writing the book was to help writers develop a creative mindset and build creative habits to take their novels from the first word to The End.
As writers, we often struggle with staying motivated and avoiding self-doubt. Can we actually finish this book? Will anyone ever read it?
Join us on the 22nd to hear Grant’s tips and tricks to establishing a writing routine, staying on track and getting those words in!
Grant Faulkner is the Executive Director of National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) and the co-founder of 100 Word Story. He has published two books on writing, Pep Talks for Writers: 52 Insights and Actions to Boost Your Creative Mojo, and Brave the Page, a teen writing guide. He’s also published a collection of 100-word stories, Fissures, and Nothing Short of 100: Selected Tales from 100 Word Story. His stories have appeared in dozens of literary magazines, including Tin House, The Southwest Review, and The Gettysburg Review, and he has been anthologized in collections such as Norton’s New Micro: Exceptionally Short Fiction and Best Small Fictions. His essays on creativity have been published in The New York Times, Poets & Writers, Writer’s Digest, and The Writer. He serves on the National Writing Project’s Writer’s Council, Lit Camp’s Advisory Council, and Aspen Words’ Creative Council. He’s also the co-host of the podcast Write-minded.
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