Interview #1: Bookwyrm

Bookwyrm: Love Me Slender

I did not actually make this amazing cover myself. a friend was nice enough to make it for me.

Your Nweb and NaNoWriMo usernames, were they inspired by anything?

NWeb: Bookwyrm. It's been so long I don't really remember the exact inspiration, only that I thought it would be neat to substitute the alternate spelling "wyrm" for "worm".
NaNoWriMo: Eruantien. I've been told this is my real life name translated into elvish. Though whether that's Quenya or Sindarin, I have no idea. I'm an elvish noob. I can say "hello" and that's about it.

NaNoWriMo or YWP?
NaNoWriMo

Who are you?
I am a 23 year old college student pursuing an English degree. I like to play video games, read, listen to music, and watch entirely too many DVDs. When I finish with my current degree, I'll be going back to get my MFA in Creative Writing and hopefully after that get someone to publish me. Or before that. I'm not picky about when it happens.

How were you sucked into NaNoWriMo? Did someone person brainwash you into joining?
NaNoWriMo has been a fixture around NWeb for years, so there's no one particular person who got me into it. It's kind of our official sport now.

Was this your first, second, tenth time participating?
This was my first serious attempt at the challenge. Previously I had written a few hundred half-hearted words and abandoned it after the first few days.

What was your novel synopsis (or original idea) at the beginning of nano? Genre?
The original idea was to incorporate the Slender Man Mythos into a sort of cosmic horror/urban fantasy storyline, all set on a university campus modeled after the school I attend. So genre would be horror/urban fantasy I suppose. Plus there was a lot of sarcastic humor involved.

Was your synopsis the same or different at the end? Or did you end up writing something completely different?
Essentially the same. I tweaked a few details, gave some characters greater narrative importance than they had originally.

Did you finish? If no, what supernatural events, natural disasters, etc. prevented you from finishing? If yes, what superpowers enabled you to write 50k in one month?
I ended up coming in around 16k. Not even halfway done, but things started to get hectic with school and work and sleeping started to look like a better option than staying up too late writing.

What method of writing proved to be the most effective?
Exiling myself from Twitter and Facebook.

Did this method involve glue, ropes, caffeine or some other forceful inducement?
There was a lot of caffeine involved. I also found that it was helpful to play Fallout 3 and kill things whenever I became frustrated with something I was writing.

What lesson(s) did NaNoWriMo teach you this past November?
That if I can overcome my procrastination, I can actually get a lot of writing done.

Website, blog, twitter, etc you want readers to know about?
I have a Tumblr that I barely use:
http://www.tumblr.com/blog/lair-of-the-snark-lord
I'm an avid Twitter user though:
http://twitter.com/#!/SnarkLord