Hi hello and welcome to the NaNoWriMo tag! This tag was created by Kristina Horner so be sure and go check out her awesome video for her answers and subscribe to her channel for some really great content! If you don't know what NaNoWriMo is, it stands for National Novel Writing Month, where you basically aim to write 50,000 words towards a novel during the month of November. I've tried to participate for several years in a row but never actually follow through, unfortunately. But 2018 seems to be the year I'll actually make some progress! So, to celebrate, I decided to do this tag! Let's get started!
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1. How many times have you done NaNoWriMo?
Successfully? Zero. I've actually never won a NaNoWriMo because I tend to just stop and/or give up at some point during the month. Whether it's because I just forget to write or lose interest in my WIP, I've never followed through with any of my projects. I've had my NaNo account for 7 years but have only participated and documented my progress twice, I believe. Once in 2016, and this year!

2. How did you first find out about NaNoWriMo?
Wow, I honestly can't remember! I've had my account for seven years and when I try to think back on how I discovered this, I can't remember a thing. I may have found it through watching some video on YouTube probably? But don't hold me to that!

3. What was the name of the first novel you attempted with NaNo?
Don't laugh. I named it Kingdom of Emmawrath and it was the one I attempted in 2016. I was super proud of it and was determined that it was going to be the book that made me a NYT Bestselling Author. It's currently still in progress somewhere, oops.

4. Give us a 1 sentence summary of what you’re writing this year.

I don't have my elevator pitch yet (somehow) but I'll get one eventually. For now, I'll say...two girls (a human and an alien) teaming up to fight against wrongful experimentation and finding friendship (and probably love) in the process. It sounds so terrible when I put it like that, oh no.

5. What’s the best writing advice you’ve ever been given?

Basically, anything that V.E. Schwab says. I'm serious, she is my absolute idol when it comes to writing. Some of my favorites from her are:

I'm not writing a book, I'm writing a chapter. 

I'm not writing a chapter, I'm writing a page.

I'm not writing a page, I'm writing a line.

“This is just a change of setting, a new storyline, a fresh chapter. We have a whole book to write," she says, squeezing me around the shoulders, "and how do we write it?"

"One page at a time.” (Quote from her book City of Ghosts)

She has so many more and she's so open about her writing process and is always giving out fantastic advice to people who ask. I just can't say enough nice things about her!

6. Did you ever take a year off from NaNo? Why?
Well, yeah, but honestly? It was because I forgot. And I also spent the first week of November 2017 in the hospital and got diagnosed with cancer that same week and started treatment and all of that so I didn't really have the ability to do pretty much anything.

7. What's your biggest inspiration when figuring out what to write?

Sometimes I just get random ideas and I try to write down keywords that I'll remember and then try to string something together from the nonsense that I come up with. I had my fiance help me with my 2016 project actually and he helped me work on a ton of worldbuilding stuff! But inspiration for me comes from all kinds of stuff. Honestly, and I know here I go again, V.E. Schwab is a huge fountain of inspiration and I just really aspire to be even like, 1/4th as good of a writer as she is one day.

8. Read us the first sentence from one of your novels.

"They say that in space, no one can hear you scream. But that didn’t stop him from trying."

That's from my current work in progress I'm calling Space Book because I cannot come up with a title at all. Did I mention I've been planning out this book for several months now? Because I have. And I still don't have a title. Go me.

9. Why do you love writing?

I've loved writing since I was very young, I'd say probably elementary school? It's always been something that I've consistently loved and wanted to do for as long as I can remember. I've dreamt about being an author for years and years and while I don't think it'll ever actually happen for me, I'll still continue to write because I love it. It's something that allows me to just create stories that I think are fun and share them with people. It makes me happy, to put it simply.
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And that's it for the NaNoWriMo tag! I had a lot of fun doing this and talking a bit about my love of writing and what I'm doing this month. I've been a bit behind with posting because I'm lazy and because I've been caught up in the first week of NaNo so I thought this would be a fun tag to share! I'd love to know some of your answers to these questions so feel free to pick some and share your answers in the comments. Or, if you've done this tag, give me the link and I'll go check it out! If you'd like to add me as a NaNoWriMo buddy, my link is below. Thanks for stopping by and I'll see you in the next chapter!

https://nanowrimo.org/participants/megannelle