Nanowrimo Spotlight: Jeremie Miller

Greetings, friends and followers. I have another spotlight interview for you this fine Saturday morning, so let’s get right to it!

Have you done Nanowrimo before?
This is my second NaNoWriMo, my first being in 2009. In 2009 I wrote science fiction, and although I have done nothing with that novel, it is still close to my heart, and I still jot down notes for it from time to time, so who knows what will happen. I managed to pull off a win in 2009 at the last minute, writing over half of my words in the last week and leaning heavily on virtual write-ins and word wars. My favorite memory from the 2009 NaNoWriMo is definitely a six hour virtual writing marathon that my region put on in that last week that really helped me finish my novel.

This is my second NaNoWriMo and I am participating as a Rebel and writing a non-fiction book to support the work I do in my business.

What are you writing about this year?
This year I am writing a book on personal and business budgeting based on the system I have used for the past seven years. As I write the book its format, pacing, and overall structure is changing on a daily basis, but the original concept was to make the book a mix of my personal money stories and the practical instructions to set up the system and use it. I am now not sure what it will look like once complete.

What is your favorite book – you have to pick just one!
I am normally a bit of a “cult of the new” when it comes to picking my favorite book, but if I had to pick just one, I will pick one of my favorites and the one that probably had the biggest impact on me as a reader and writer: Watership Down by Richard Adams.

I read this book in Grade 4 and my parents had to give me a special note to get permission to take it out of the school library as the librarian had determined that I could not read and understand the book at that age. So, reading Watership Down was an amazing experience not only because it is a great book, but because it showed me that I could do things people didn’t think I could, and that my parents had my back.

What advice would you give to all your fellow Wrimos?
1. Don’t make this experience more complicated than it needs to be. I find that a lot of people on the message boards like to hype up how difficult writing is and end up freaking themselves out and giving up. If you participate in NaNoWriMo because you love to freak yourself out then great, but if you actually want to write the 50,000 words try to stay calm.

2. Write every day, and if you can, at a set time or times. These don’t have to be the only times you write, but having some set times each day has helped me to cruise through my word count goals and I am having a way more steady and successful NaNo this year than my first attempt. I write at 9am and 130pm every day during Nano for 30 minutes and it has been amazing.

3. Participate in write-ins. I can only do virtual write-ins but they always help me immensely with my word count.

4. Don’t delete anything. My current project has four versions of the introduction, and I know each of them will have something I will use during editing. NaNo is about quantity not quality so deleting words makes no sense.

5. Ignore everything I have said above if it doesn’t work for you, we all know what opinions are like.

6. Just frackin’ do it. Sit down and write, that is really the only piece of advice that any writer needs.

Sneaky Ninja question! What’s your pet peeve?
NaNo Specific pet peeve: This one won’t be popular, and I am not judging anyone, would never say anything (but you asked), and is just my pet peeve: but it drives me a bit nuts that there are so many people getting serious about rules for what counts as a “proper NaNo experience”, what counts as rebelling, what new rule changes affect the validity of NaNoWriMo, BUT: word padding and word count “dirty tricks” are completely legal, there are even forum posts telling people how to do it. It just bugs me, there I said it!

General Pet Peeve: Super intense sport parents yelling at their kid, my kid, anyone’s kid during sporting events for young kids (my son is 7). These parents get a bonus pet peeve if they do this AND have no clue how to actually play the sport.

I am first and foremost a father and a husband. My family is the absolute most important part of my life and I pretty much do everything I do for them. My biggest goal in my life is to provide the support my family needs so we can have amazing adventures together. To provide this support I run my own small business helping other entrepreneurs figure out their personal and business finances so they can run a successful business while paying themselves and turning a profit. My new website is just being built so you can go to www.jeremiemiller.com and look at the header!

Thanks, Jeremie! You can find Jeremie on Nanowrimo as jeremiemiller.

Still looking for a few letter Campers

First off, thanks to everybody who responded to my first call for Camp Nanowrimo writers for me to spotlight in the April A-Z challenge this year. I’ve already got lots of really cool interviews back.

But in going over my notes last night, I realized that I’m still missing anybody to include for the following letters:

A
I
L
V
X
Z

So if you’re going to be doing Camp Nanowrimo in April, and have a name, username, book, or blog starting with any of these letters, please leave a comment or gmail me at chriskelworth . Or if you know somebody who you think would be perfect for one of these spotlights, tell them to check out my blog! 😉

I’m looking for a full alphabet of Camp Nano-ers to spotlight!

I know we’re not even into March yet, but I’m already looking ahead to April for a few things…

• I’ve signed up for the A-Z blogging challenge, for the third time.
• For the first time in six years or so, I won’t be writing a script in April for Script Frenzy 😦
• And, for the first time EVER, Camp Nanowrimo is running an April session full of novelling AND script-writing goodness!

Putting the three of them together; I had a great time spotlighting some of the features of Script Frenzy last year for the A to Z challenge, so this year I’m going to make Camp Nano my topic. But I’m going to change it up a little, and I’m not going to fill up my alphabet with topics like C for Cabinmates or R for Rebel. Instead, I’d like to make as many posts as possible about my fellow campers! (It’s been a while since I’ve done a spotlight series, after all.)

So, if you’re going to be doing Camp Nano in April this year, and you’d like to volunteer for an interview or just to have me mention something about you during April, leave a comment here or contact me at chriskelworth at gmail dot com. I’ll try to slot you in based on your name, your username, or your novel title.

Whoo-hoo!

A little insecure about Camp Nanowrimo…

So, yeah, I remembered about Insecure Writer’s Support Group at the eleventh hour. 😉

But it’s a fairly good day for it, because I just started the August session of Camp Nanowrimo. I’ve pushed myself to a pretty good day 1 word count – in fact, the scene with my character’s mother and the witch just started flowing so well that I didn’t want to stop in the middle of it, and I’ve got 1897 words now.

But this is really the first time that I’m going to Camp Nanowrimo and not hanging out on the rebel side of Camp. August last year, I said that I was a rebel editor for camp, and I didn’t really end up with much to show for my editing, though I learned a lot about structure from Lani Diane Rich’s Storywonk revision class. In June, I got about 20,000 words done and more than half a dozen stories, so I’m calling that a rebel win.

This time, it’s fifty thousand or bust. I’m excited and yeah, a lot nervous about that.

But onward! The only way out of camp is the finish line. 😉

A great note to end the month on.

Plenty of good news here, yay!

First off, my tooth is much better – found some really great dentists here in Lawrence. I’m not quite sure if the insurance stuff is all squared away, but I’m very happy with the rebuild job they did on my chomper. 😀

I sorta met my rebel goal for June – if you count 2000 words of worldbuilding to be the equivalent of a short story. Plus a 972 word flash scene, and a 425 word start that didn’t go anywhere. And I’ve written over 20000 new words total in June.

Started my rewrite of ‘The Storm Mirror’ for fellow workshoppers. I’ll probably be a little crazy trying to finish that tomorrow, but I like where it’s going so far.

And I’m going to sleep now. See you all in July!