Guest Host: Meet the Co-Creator of #Wordmongering!

A few weeks ago I did a post about the newest, coolest, bestest thing on Twitter: #wordmongering.

And now, I’ve managed to wrangle one of the creators over to host my blog and explain all about the awesomeness that is #wordmongering.

Without further ado, take it away Moni!

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Hi Christi & Christi’s awesome followers! Monica-Marie Holtkamp here! (You can just call me Moni since Monica-Marie is just too long for people to remember!)
 
About a month ago I was looking for a swift kick in the tush to get my story done.  I had a deadline and I wasn’t anywhere NEAR where I wanted to be with it.  So, having heard of word wars I took that to Twitter begging for people to word war with me.  I was completely overwhelmed with the fact that there were at least three people willing to go in with me (usually I’m not used to such a response).  Batting around terms I popped out with word warmongering. 

One of the people that took me up on the challenge was @notveryalice, she loved the idea that I had written for 30 minutes and rest for 30 minutes.  Her mind squished the entire word together creating the hashtag #wordmongering.  We started challenging one and all to join us.  Along the way we picked up a few followers.  Now, we’re to the point where I meet Christi Corbett. Now, after having floundered a little bit about the concept she’s a devout Mongerer having fun mongering away!

Along the way, since this was and still is a relatively new hashtag I have been bombarded with questions about what this animal is.  Being excited that others would like to join in on my ADHD style of writing I was MORE than happy to explain everything to one and all.  Christi jumped on the excitement bandwagon right away.  Along the way she’s been bringing others in as well….the response has been overwhelmingly awesome. 

Now what IS this hashtag I keep blithely referring to?  I’m more than HAPPY to answer that!  

Being someone with diagnosed ADHD I have a hard time sitting still and paying attention to any one task for too long a period of time.  This would create a problem for someone like me since my dream is to become a published author.  To be an author doesn’t that mean that I have to focus on a project for a length of period of time?  The answer to that question is actually NO.  Years ago I’d stumbled upon something called FlyLady.  It’s a really great system of being able to keep your house organized by incorporating little 15 minute bursts of cleaning and before you know it everything is done. 

Light bulb moment hit me.  Why don’t I do that with my writing??  Thinking hard about it I realized that 15 minutes was too short a time to really get a decent amount of writing in, and an hour was just too long for me to sit still and focus.  Splitting the difference I decided that 30 minutes seemed the perfect amount of time.  The method was born! 

Rather than fight my nature I simply challenged other to word warmongering sessions (now the hashtag #wordmongering) for 30 minutes and then take the other 30 minutes left in the hour to do whatever was needed.  Be it mundane housework-y type things, grabbing snackages and drinkages, or even just surfing the web for fun.  Before I knew it after some hours of working this way I had over 12k done on my project!  Astounded and excited doesn’t even begin to describe the feeling.
 
So, here I am all bursting at the seams….what do I do?  Well, Twitter was the best bet to keep challenges going.  Now that @notveryalice gave me the wonderful moniker for my method I challenged people to #wordmongering every chance that I got! 

To keep it simple I started at :00 (that way anyone from any time zone could join in without having to do math to be at the right place at the right time.)  We’d write like crazy until :30 (again for ease of everyone) then we’d all convene under the #wordmongering hashtag and brag about our word counts!  The excitement that people had for being able to do more in 2 30 minute sessions than they’d done all week was astounding.  They wanted more more more.  Soon I gathered a following of people jumping in.  The cheering was awesome and it’s an integral part of the Mongering process. 
 
Now, I’ve got a few simple rules that I hold My Mongerers to…..have some kind of work in progress to write with, stay positive–#wordmongering is all about positivity and I hold everyone to that, and ANY word count you get no matter how great or small is cause to celebrate….after all it’s more than you had 30 minutes ago.  It’s that simple.  The wave of good vibes coming off of #wordmongering is awesome!  People tell me regularly how much they feed off of the energy and celebrations that go on in the hashtag. 

To think, one person’s way of coping with ADHD and be able to follow her dream became a movement that helps other writers get over their hump and get their works down in any way shape or form. 
 
The other awesome thing is that @notveryalice (being a co-founder since she’s the namer of this movement) has branched off to our sister hashtag of #editmongering.  Where I start at :00 and go to :30 for writing, she starts at :30 and goes to :00 for editing.  This one is a little slower to take off, but just think of how freeing it would be to not have to stare at a project for ungodly amounts of time trying to find your mistakes.  Fresh eyes are the most essential thing needed for editing.  Just think how fresh they’d be with a 30 minute break in between each 30 minute session of editing?  Just a thought to throw out there!  So when you get done #wordmongering and your project is all complete….why not jump into #editmongering and go about it the same way?
 
Although it hasn’t seemed like it lately, I do use #wordmongering to write my Young Adult novels.  It’s the way that I can finally live the dream that I’d had when I was 7-8 years old.  I’d been reading since I was 2 1/2 but until I was 7-8 I hadn’t realized that people WROTE the books that I was reading.  When that thought gelled in my head the dream was born.  Not only did I want to READ books….I wanted to WRITE them as well.  So here I am several years later, finally picking up where my third grade self left off and am writing to my little heart’s content.  (Unfortunately, until now LIFE kept getting in the way and the dream was nearly lost…but when the opportunity presented itself I jumped in with both feet.) 

Although I haven’t had any of my projects published yet, I’ve been working hard on them and learning TONS along the way.  Currently I’m querying AVA a young adult fantasy novel about a girl and a hot guy that get whisked away by an electric fog to a pocket realm in the Bermuda Triangle.

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You can find out more information about Moni by checking out her blog.

And be sure to stop by the brand new #Wordmongering site created by @notveryalice!

While you’re at it, be sure to follow both the creators on Twitter…

@MonicaMarieH

@notveryalice

Also, Moni is interested in guest-hosting on other blogs so she can spread the #wordmongering concept even further. If you are interested, contact me via email (use the “Contact Christi” link on the left sidebar) and I’ll put you in touch with her.