I know. I know. It's a little early to get discouraged. My word count for today is pathetic and I have no real intention of adding to it before I crash tonight. I'm tired and oh so very crabby. I tried channeling that anger and frustration in to a scene later in the book where Abby and her husband get in to a huge fight over Jay, but that was unsuccessful.
Instead, I'm going to take this opportunity to talk a little bit more about NaNoWriMo and why it's such an important cause to me.
I've always had a wild and vivid imagination. I remember being very young, probably six or seven, and pretending I was April O'Neil running around my house with the Ninja Turtles. There was a time period where I was Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz and my mini poodle, Puddles, was the perfect Todo. Recess in elementary school often meant my friends and I fighting off Puddies as the Power Rangers. I was the pink one, of course.
Every year in elementary school, each student participated in the Young Author's program. It was through this opportunity that I really developed my love for writing; taking these fantasies constantly playing in my head and sharing them with the world. Where most kids outgrow their desire to role play and pretend, I reveled and thrived in it. Being able to escape in to my own mind, my own world was fun enough, but to be able to share it with others and allow them to see what I was seeing? Amazing. I can think of few things better than holding a new book in your hands and getting lost in an alternate reality. It's been my savior.
I don't know how many schools, if any, still run the Young Author's program. With the hard economic times, it seems these types of things fall through the cracks. Communication through the written word is slowly disappearing, degrading even with the growth of technology and social media. Why read a book when you can just watch the movie? And really, who writes letters anymore? Send a text! It's faster and you don't have to spell anything correctly.
The Office of Letters and Lights, a small nonprofit organization based in Oakland, CA, seeks to foster and cultivate literacy across the globe. NaNoWriMo was founded in 1999 by freelance author Chris Baty with only 140 participants. Since then it has grown to over 250,000 writers world wide pouring their heart and souls into their 50,000+ word stories every November.
While it's all fun and games (well maybe not all) for the writers, it's also the OLL's biggest fundraising push of the year. Most of the writers donate to the cause. Two years ago in the Twin Cities, we had a book sale to raise funds. Some writers even have sponsorship pages for supporters to donate to them. These funds go towards supporting classrooms, libraries, and independent bookstores in your communities as well as OLL sponsored Camp NaNoWriMo and NaNoWriMo's Young Author's.
This post is longer than I intended for it to be, but hopefully that says to you how excited I am to fund-raise for, donate to, and support the OLL. They're a great group of people working for a very worthy cause. If you want to chat more about the OLL, NaNoWriMo, or would like to donate to the cause, shoot me an email. This sleep deprived girl is ready for bed. If you stuck with my incoherent rambling this long, Thank you.
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