Hi team, popping back with this post is to once again share with you about The Mighty Pens and my writing journey. If you’ve been with me you remember when I got started with The Mighty Pens in 2018 with this post or last year when I reached back out on giving Tuesday to give you an update on my writing journey. I won’t lie, grad school and then the pandemic burned me out in a number of ways as you’ve all seen. It’s taken allowing myself to just revel in the things I love this last year to get to the point that I know I’ll keep writing, and I want to share that journey and encourage other on theirs. This is why I spend hours (truly so many hours as I am one of the head volunteers) with The Mighty Pens, because this writing community is so encouraging and works to put their creativity to support a good cause.
This year during NaNoWriMo, I am writing with The Mighty Pens to fundraise for We Need Diverse Books. I love that we are working to help this nonprofit and their crusade to fight book banning. As a writer and as a reader the wave of censorship that is sweeping the country hurts my heart. There are plenty of books that I don’t like, and even more that I may not agree with, but I am not the person to decide who is allowed to write a story and share that. I particularly feel impacted when there are stories being targeted are those I loved growing up or when authors I respect have their books banned when they wrote these stories to help young (and not so young ) folks see themselves in stories. If we aren’t allowed to read things that challenge our viewpoint and help us to become more knowledgeable, more empathetic, more assured and help us to develop our opinions on why we believe the things that we do, then we have become a society that doesn’t want to think but instead wants to be told what to think.
Maya Angelou, John Green, Sarah J. Maas, Judy Blume, Meg Cabot, Toni Morrison, Gregory McGuire. Are all names that have been banned, and these are the folks that we either grew up reading or you regularly see on shelves. Influential and beloved. There are so many more authors, especially young adult authors that I interact with and would one day love to be contemporaries with if I ever get published, that are on these lists and their careers hinge and the ability to keep writing hinge on their books being out in the world and getting to readers. It breaks my heart.
We aren’t Germany in WWII. We aren’t burning books. Yet, to start down this path of telling people what they can and can’t read because a handful of others thinks they are “too much” in one way or another? That hurts the policy wonk in me. I don’t often talk online that my day job is in policy, I love it, but I use my work hours to push for the changes and use my voice in that way. But as someone who cares about what history has shown us, and for our unalienable rights that are given to us in the United States, this is an area that I desperately want to protect. The first amendment is the first for a reason, our freedom of speech has always been something we hold dear, so we are we trying to curtail the voices of others?
This has gotten so much longer than I ever meant it to. But it’s a soapbox I care about, I’m the granddaughter of an author and I’ve been writing as long as I can remember. I believe everyone should be able to share their story. This is why I love that I’ve found a writing community that wants to keep sharing their voices and help raise money to make sure others can too. For the Mighty Pens, I lead the graphics and the social media teams. Which means I am constantly in front of a screen to share our successes, help people come together to write with each other, and cheer everyone on in their journey this month. It also means I often am extremely busy and don’t write as much during November as I mean to. This year I’m trying harder to make sure that I am still writing and still working on the stories I love so much. The stories I one day want to share with you all.
It really struck me tonight when I joined my fellow Mighty Pens on evening sprints for NaNoWriMo how much time I’ve put into writing, and how that wouldn’t have been possible without a supportive writing community. I made “Bronze Pen” tonight which means I wrote over 5,000 words so far this month. However, when the overarching goal of National Novel Writing Month is to try and get 50,000 words, and an average novel is between 90-120,000 words… 5,000 doesn’t seem like a lot. But every word can lead to bigger milestones, and the NaNoWriMo website tracks all the words you’ve written over in of their challenges. I started tracking myself on their website in 2016. Tonight I broke 100,000 words tracked. That does not include the words I’ve written on my own, or in between challenges. I often read well over 100,000 words in an evening, but this to me seems like such a huge milestone to have written this many down. So not only did I make Bronze Pen this evening, but I cracked a huge milestone in my writing journey, and I feel like I truly have something to show for a hobby that is so very cerebral and often doesn’t have a final product for years.
So thank you, whoever actually reads all of this. For supporting me, for probably being someone who has cheered me on over the years. If you would like to support me, and support my fundraising goal this year, here is the link to my personal page. I raised $300 last year and I’d love to break past that and try and raise a little more. So my goal this year $500, and every dollar donated I truly appreciate.
The Mighty Pens also encourages our writers with prizes for fundraising. These prizes are donated by ‘industry professionals’ AKA the writers, authors, agents, and editors who are putting out the books we are all reading. They’ve been in our shoes of wanting to share stories, and want to encourage us to keep going and they do that by donating books, or lessons on writing craft, or critiques on what we’ve written to get it ready to move forward (personally there is an amazing writing course that I’m hoping I can raise enough to be eligible for!). This year we also have some amazing donors who have contributed to a matching fund so with a goal of $10,000 for the fundraiser we’ve got 50% matched already. This is the first time we’ve had a matching fund and have already reached two of our matching goals, only 13 days into the month!
I am so proud to be part of this organization, to be a leader in this group, and so glad that we can make a difference. Thank you for supporting me on this journey.
-Kaite
P.S. On a slightly more fun note, want to listen to the playlist I’ve got on repeat this month as I’m writing? It’s one I made when I first started this story and had been adding to as the story develops.
my way by Starlight 
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