NaNoWriMo 2021 & Government Grant
The German government is supporting me in my attempt to write a dystopian crime novel. Which falls together perfectly with NaNoWriMo 2021.
I am happy to announce, that my dystopian crime novel project Grim Deep has received a grant from the federal government here in Germany. The German copyright collection agency for writers, VG Wort 
, and the Commissioner for Culture and Media of the federal government have created the programme Neustart Kultur to promote writers in the wake of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic. As part of this programme, I have received a grant of €5000 over four months, starting today. That means I will receive €4500 now and another €500 when I reach my goal for the grant, which is to finish the novel. I think it is pretty cool that they considered my project, even though I’m writing the novel in English and only plan to translate it to German later.
So far, I have written 21,599 words (119,400 characters) for this project. I have no idea how long the book will be in the end, though, as I’m writing it by the seat of my pants, Stephen King style. But I will give my utmost to finish it within the next four months.
To this end, I am joining NaNoWriMo again this year. It perfectly falls together with the start of my grant, after all. In case you aren’t aware, the National Novel Writing Month (or NaNoWriMo) is a global community of people trying to put 50,000 words to paper during the month of November. I won it once in 2011, while still at university in Bonn, and binned the novel. I entered Grim Deep in 2018 and in 2019 and failed miserably both times. Maybe this year, motivated by the grant and the ten-year-anniversary of my original win, I can pull it off. If you have a NaNoWriMo account, you can follow my efforts on my profile on the website. Additionally, I plan to give regular updates in my new daily vlog series. I might also stream some of my writing sessions on Twitch, if that turns out to be a workable format. Just something my friend Halefa came up with last night during a co-op gaming stream and I really like that idea. I don’t know if I can pull it off, but I am willing to try.
In any case, I hope that 50,000 words written in November will actually get me off to a good start to actually finishing this novel in the allotted time for the grant.
If you want to read the first two chapters of my novel right now, you can do so for free on the web at grimdeep.com. While the book hasn’t been published yet, a preview version will always be available on that site. Later on, I’m planning eBook versions and a print publication via Kindle Direct Publishing. If I ever get that far. We will see. In any case, I thank the German government for supporting me in the effort!
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