NaNoWriMo is an online challenge organised every November on the dedicated site. Writers ‘gather’ from all over the world to challenge themselves to write the first draft of a new project in just 30 days.

I’ve taken part in NaNoWriMo for the past 15 years, and every year, I hear…

We need to start from what is NaNoWriMo.

The challenge has changed quite a bit over more than twenty years of life (it started in 1999). In the beginning, it was simply a challenge to write the first draft of a novel of at least 50.000 …

Every year, it’s the same. When I tell fellow writers that I’m about to take part in the NaNoWriMo challenge, either they reply, ‘Cool! I’m doing it too,” or “I would never force myself to write.”

Indeed, there is this concept that if you write for 30 days in a…

Why on Earth did Tolkien choose the Hobbits as the decisive ‘forces’ in the fight against Sauron?

He had already created a lot of great characters. Characters that most reflected the concept of the hero — whether positive or negative. The Silmarillion is full to the brim of seriously awesome…

The notorious Stephen King quotes from Dance Macabre reads:

“Talent is cheaper than table salt. What separates the talented individual from the successful one is a lot of hard work.”

- Stephen King

Now, I don’t know whether Stephen King thinks talent is cheap because it has no real use…

I much prefer to remember birthdays than days of death, but today I want to remember the day Tolkien left us, forty-eight years ago.

I often think about Tolkien in his days during the war and the years soon after, when he started drafting his mythology. I often think about…