was a success in that it motivated a writer to create something — anything — that he or she wouldn’t have otherwise. When Astoria resident Ken Crossland was reaching the end of November last year, his first year participating in NaNoWriMo, he was about halfway to the word count goal and realized that he wasn’t “going to make it” to 50,000, he said. “But I have 25,000 more words than I did a month ago, so it’s not a loss,” he said. He plans to continue working on that same contemporary fiction novel this November. In his daily life, Crossland, who has also written comedy and performed at open mics at QED in Astoria, is inspired by comedian Jerry Seinfeld’s habit of writing a joke every day and marking it off on a calendar. Crossland has been doing that for a year straight. “I’m a very habitual writer anyway; I write every day no matter what,” he said. By participating in NaNoWriMo, “I wanted to see if I could push a little harder; sometimes I get caught in the outline hole where you get stuck in the outline forever.” One way wrimos can get unstuck is by going to write-ins, events in which participants meet up to write together. The New York City region of NaNoWriMo holds writeins at the Panera on 35th Avenue in Astoria, which Walker and Astoria resident Raven Jakubowski have both taken advantage of in the past. You can join these Queens write-ins on Mondays from 7 to 10 p.m. Additionally, local writer and teacher Kelly Jean Fitzsimmons regularly hosts her YouDoYou Writers Salon, which she describes as “a study hall for adults,” in Novelists Western MEDOFF KatrinaMedof NOVEMBER 2016 I BOROMAG.COM I 15
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