NaNoWriMo 2014 Is Coming!!!!!

    So this is the second year I've done November NaNoWriMo (I did Camp NaNo this year and I think two years before), and this year, I'm definitely going to win (I said that last year too :P)
    But even if I don't, I'm still super pumped about it. I'm actually counting down the hours to November 1st. Literally hours. I meant to post this like three days ago. 
    I'm not ready. Not even close. I'm definitely more of a seat-of-the-pants type of writer. I have a few characters, some plot points, and a couple ideas. That's it. I can't talk much about it because I'll spoil it and I don't want to do that, but it's gonna be pretty cool. 

    So is anyone else doing NaNo this year? How well-prepared are you?

Thoughts on Writing and Blue Jolly Ranchers

So the other day my mom sent me a video called Irish People Try American Junk Food or something similar to that (look it up, it's hilarious, but be prepared to spend hours you should be using to work watching it and the various related videos, because there's a LOT of them. N-Not that I have any experience in that *shiftyeyes*). One of the guys in the video had the revelation that Jolly Ranchers (I think he was talking specifically about blue ones for reasons you'll understand soon) tasted like "a doctors office". Hmm, I thought to myself, I don't remember that. I dismissed the thought and didn't remember it until a few days later. 

My mom bought me a bag of Jolly Ranchers (this is due to an incident that I will recount at a later time) and I ate a few. We both ended up eating blue ones at the same time and both had the same revelation as unnamed Irish video guy. The blue Jolly Ranchers really do taste like a doctors office. And by this, I of course mean that they taste weird and vaguely medicinal. I don't go around licking things in doctors offices. That'd just be weird. 

What does this have to do with writing? Absolutely nothing, at least not on the surface. What I'm trying to get at is that writing, really good, realistic writing, is about things like this. The little nuances and foibles of life (yes I did get that from Miranda Hart), like the sudden realization that the Irish guy you saw on YouTube really has a point. Blue Jolly Ranchers do taste like a doctors office. 

Life is full of those funny, awkward little moments, and I think incorporating them into your writing - sparingly, of course, unless it's an entirely humorous book - is what gives stories and characters their believability and relatability.