Nanowrimo Spotlight: Cory Beal

Good evening! Tonight, I’m interviewing Cory. You can find Cory’s website here. Cory, how long have you been participating in Nano?

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This is my 5th time doing NaNo. I think the biggest difference for me this time is just the challenges of finding the time to write with three little ones running around the house. Finding the time is always the biggest challenge for me (as well as a lot of people, probably most).

I actually started out doing NaNo for the first time in 2010. My wife knew I had been wanting to write a book for a long time and I had started, but never finished one, so she bought me this book, No Plot? No Problem, and that’s when I found out aboutNaNo. I signed up right away and have loved doing it every year since.

What are you writing about this year?
This year I’m doing a sci-fi adventure novel about a guy named J.J. Collins who is in the middle of his 13th life; every time he dies he wakes up again and starts all over as a kid and each time the world around him is different. He doesn’t know why it’s happening to him and he doesn’t really care, mainly he just wants to find the one person who he fell in love with during his first life.

What is your favorite movie – you have to pick just one!
Star Wars – I remember being a kid and watching the original trilogy over and over, we didn’t have cable, but we had a VCR and the 3 Star Wars movies on VHS, so that’s what I’d watch. I still love watching them, but I think the first, Episode IV: A New Hope, is my favorite.

What advice would you give to all your fellow Wrimos?
Just keep plugging away at that keyboard. The thing I learned about NaNo is that even you don’t finish, if you don’t reach the 50k words, you still end the month having written a lot more than you probably would have otherwise, so it’s still a win. Of course, the whole point is to win, to get that magic number, to reach your goal and conquer the mountain. My advice is still the same – just keep writing – it’s the only way to win! Write everywhere – waiting at the doctor’s office, on your lunch break, early in the morning or late at night, whenever works for you. With the technology we have now it’s to write on your smartphone or tablet and have the app sync to your home computer, so there’s not really the excuse of not being able to work on your novel when you are away from home – you should always be working on your novel.

Sneaky Ninja question! What’s your hobby horse?