Round-Robin Writing
NaNo All Year Round
Critique Corner
Featured Writer
Open Critique
Blogs
Natalie
Miss Elisha
Message Boards
The Split Infinitive
Book Reviews
Writing Contests
Resources/Links
All About To Boldly NaNoHow did this all begin? Where did the idea for To Boldly NaNo come from? And what could possibly make you think a full-scale website was a good idea? All excellent questions. It began innocently enough. Back in September 2006, Natalie and Miss Elisha were chatting about some random thing, as is their wont, and it came out in conversation that they were both participating in National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo). It was to be Miss Elisha's first year taking part, and though Natalie had competed before she had never managed to complete her 50,000 words. Both Natalie and Miss Elisha were so very excited about participating and meeting their goals, and just about writing in general, that they decided to give themselves—and anyone else who wanted it—a healthy dose of preparation and gearing-up. To this end they created a little community at LiveJournal called To Boldly NaNo. During the month of October 2006, they posted daily writing prompts for themselves and other community members in an effort to warm up for the main event. In the last two weeks of the month they joint-wrote a terribly cliché little short story called "Love by Starlight." This is all way more impressive when you consider that October 2006 was the month Miss Elisha got married (so yes, technically it should be Mrs. Elisha these days, but alas! She is stubborn.) and Natalie did a bit of traveling herself. So pieces were written and posts were made from hotels and airports occasionally, but they managed to reach their goal of 20,000 words in a mere 14 days, in addition to responding to the daily prompts, which ranged anywhere from a few short sentences to 1,000+ words. Then November came and it was time for the big show. Thanks to their little community, everyone was charged up and raring to go. Natalie was unfortunately hijacked by "real" life (one of the perils of working in the retail industry during the holiday season), but Miss Elisha was able to meet her 50,000-word goal with little difficulty. She fully attributes her NaNoWriMo victory not to her obvious long-windedness but to the preparation she underwent at the TBN community. So, skip ahead to January 2007. Natalie and Miss Elisha continued posting and responding to prompts throughout November and December, and continuously formulating new ideas for the community. The problem is that many of their ingenious ideas were outside the limitations of the simple blog format that LiveJournal offered.
Hence ToBoldlyNaNo.com was born. |
|||
All About
|
|
All About
|
 |
| Natalie is a self-proclaimed nerd with a splash of geekiness. Growing up the wilderness of Utah she learned at a young age she had no talent for anything that required physical activity, so she turned her interests to reading and writing. Her first story, “Herbie Goes to Mars,” was a great hit in her third grade class. | Miss Elisha, being hereditarily anti-social, spent the majority of her formative years either writing in her multitudinous journals or reading whatever books she could find. She later translated these habits into degrees in English and French, which means the only thing she's capable of doing is talking. Or writing, which is simply talking on paper. | ||
