On Sept. 28 at 7 p.m., Grant Faulkner, National Novel Writing Month’s (NaNoWriMo) executive director, will come to Carmel to talk about his new book, Pep Talks for Writers: 52 Insights and Prompts to Boost Your Creative Mojo, at The Quirky Feather Confectionary. Later, at 8:30 p.m. he will host a meet and greet with local “Wrimos”.

Faulkner said, “I’m going to talk about NaNoWriMo itself. A lot of people don’t know what it is and why it’s good. The huge thing about NaNoWriMo is that it is not just for people who are accomplished writers it’s for anybody who wants to make creativity a priority. It’s going to be fun. I’m going to read from the book. I am going to do some writing exercises and some group exercises. It will be a wonderful interactive event.”

Writing an entire novel in a month may seem like a daunting task, yet according to nanowrimo.org, in 2015 “431,626 people, including 80,137 students and educators in the Young Writers Program . . . walked away novelists.” NaNoWriMo’s reach extends past competitions by hosting events and pep talks all over the country, including this one in Carmel

Kiley Gardner, previous co-leader of the Creative Writing Club and senior, said she is interested in the event. She participated in the 2016 meet-up at the Carmel Public Library and is a NaNoWriMo specialist in the Creative Writing Club.  Gardner said the most important part of the event will be that young or new writers can talk to a professional writer.

Gardner said, “As a young author, I have had opportunities in the past to talk to published authors and kind of get their take on things and see, like, how they have gotten to where they are now, the struggle that it takes to get published, and even just put your writing out there. I think that for other young authors, to be able to talk to someone like that [. . .] I think that will definitely be a positive thing.”