Those of you in the writing world may have seen this around lately. Maybe you even know what it means. I had no idea. For those of you on my side, allow me to enlighten you. NaNoWriMo stands for 'National Novel Writing Month'. How serendipitous is it that the month I come out of the "I'm-a-writer" closet, is the month that is dedicated to writing a novel? I'm thinking it's a sign. There's even a whole sited dedicated to NaNoWriMo. Oddly enought, it's nanowrimo.org. The whole point of NaNoWriMo is, as I'm sure you guessed, to write a novel in 30 days. Or at least 50,000 words of it. The whole point is to get you writing. It doesn't have to be perfect, it doesn't even have to make much sense. JUST. WRITE. After you write, you can edit and revise to your heart's content. You can polish, shine, and buff until it sparkles like a new trophy. The hard part is to just get it out there. You might be saying, "Diana, it's almost the end of November already, there is no way I'm writing 50,000 words from now until then". To that I reply, that's fine. Make your own start/end date for your own NaNoWriMo. Don't deny the world of all those amazing ideas running around in your head due to some technicalities. Bust out that pen and paper or computer and keyboard and get writing!

Ok, so I don't have the newest version of the iPhone, but my husband has shown me enough clips of what it can do to last me until he gets his own and can show me in person. How awesome would it be though, if we could ask our phone and get an answer? For all I know maybe you can and I'm just out of the loop. For all of you like me, here are a couple awesome links to keeping track of your word count and staying within your timeline. (If you have one) Here's a word counter widget from Svenja Liv, I use this on my blog. Then here's a link to full scale tracker to keep track of, well, everything. It has word count, progress chart, a sample query you can fill out, character list, plot sheet. This thing is awesome! Hope it helps you as much as it helps me! Did I mention there's a bunch of designs to choose from?

I've recently started writing my first book. Yes, I've written others, but they usually get tossed aside after a couple weeks. This one is different. This one is going all the way! I'm determined to finish it and (fingers crossed!) get it published! When that will happen, I have no idea. I also had no ideas about all the blogs out there that are dedicated to writing, writers, publishers, and whatever else goes on in the writing world! I was actually inspired by a friend of mine, even though she has no idea, to start this one. You can find her blog here. There was all sorts of information on there to help me get into the online world of writers, (plus how can you not love cookies that don't fatten you up?) as well as plenty of her personal stories that keep me laughing and realizing I'm not alone in the struggle to get what's in my head onto paper in an understandable matter. From her blog, I found several other writers, published and not. I decided that I'd add my 2 cents into the vast blogging/writing world, and maybe, just maybe, I can help someone the way those people have helped me!