Introduce yourself to the region!

Hi. I'm "sonofjohn" and this is my first NaNo. I don't have specific plans, but I do have several story lines that I've beening meaning to flesh out for the last 20 years. Hopefully, they will provide enough material to reach the 50K goal. Usually, they pull elements from the fantasy genre: epic quest, good vs. evil to save the world, swordfights, conflicted heros, superwarriors.

This year, I decided to stop procrastinating and wondering "could I?" and actually do it or not do it.

Needless to say, story- and novel-writing is completely orthogonal to my day job.

Hallo all, I'm Cameron. I was part of this region last year, and this is my third year of doing NaNo. I hope to be able to attend some of the events, but since I'm up in Aurora due to school (anyone know anyone who attends IMSA? If so, tell me. I want to hunt them down) I might not be able to. I intend to win this year, but November's going to be one hell of a month. I've got artwork to do for an event, all my schoolwork, a 36 hour straight math competition....no sleep for me!

My novel's based off this dream a friend of mine had...terrible dream, it was. Basically, everything gets nuked. And then it's really bad. And stuff.

*doesn't really have all this planned out*

Hello! I'm Teresa and while I live in Plainfield, I go to school and nano in Naperville! My dad and I started doing this five or six years ago. Now it's just me, myself, and whoever I can drag along to join me!

While I usually try for Fantasy novels, I decided to try a Historical Fiction/Sci-Fi novel this year and have been working on the research through October. This years novel is based off of Graham Hancock's research on a civilization he believed to have existed in the year 10,500 BC. The story jumps back and forth between present day archeologists and astronomers - as lead by Dr. Hal Galvin - then turns to the people of the ancient civilization themselves living their everyday lives - as told from the point of view of a young girl name Fifika.

Hello everyone, My name is Jill and this will be my third time doing NaNo. I was not successful either of those attempts, but I was in grad school and working full time which made it difficult. No grad school this year so third time is the charm right?

I have two ideas for a story this year and think I will go with a ghost story set on a horse farm. A man, his wife, their college age son and eldery mother move into an old farm house. The family buys some horses and something begins spooking the horses. That is all I got so far, but it is a start.

Hopefully I will make it out to some events, because it would be nice to meet other people doing this.

Have fun everyone !!!

Hello! :) I'm Susan, and I live in Downers Grove, although I was a Naperville resident for ten years!

The last couple of years have been topsy turvy, but I've atttempted NaNoWriMo many times. I think I've won it once or twice. I'm hoping this year will be a good one!

I have been mulling over a time travel story involving the 1893 Columbian Exposition for a long time and hope to start on it this year. I've an idea to include a modern steampunk society with the Exposition and include murder, since I'm always up for a good murder mystery. We shall see how it works out. :)

I am hoping to come to some of the sessions this year since I FINALLY have a laptop (yay!). I've missed the first two prep sessions because of travel and work conflicts, but I am gearing up to come to the next one! :)

Good luck to everyone and I look forward to getting to know you guys (whether in person or virtually)! :)

Susan

Hey guys!
I'm Clearly_Insane_87 from Minooka.
I've been doing Nano for a couple of years but haven't really spent much time interacting with all of you lovely people. I hope to change it this year. I love Nano because I love the race of it. I've been writing since I was very little and I am so glad to have this! My story this year should focus on motorcycles, bars and the drama that happens when you become a "grown up"...unless I completely decide to write something completely different by November. I have no real control over my muses. We all know the books write themselves.
Feel free to add me. I could use more writing buddies.

My name is Victoria and I also live in Downers Grove. I'm a graduate student at Dominican University in River Forest, where I am working on my Masters in Library and Information Science. I currently work at a public library in the south suburbs. It's a long commute, but I love my job. I've participated in NaNo before, but I've never met the 50k goal. I often complain about how working full-time and going to school leaves me no time to write, but I decided that I need to start making time for it. After all, it's not like my life will ever be less busy, at least not in the foreseeable future.

My novel this year will be a fantasy adventure about a group of heroes attempting to keep a power-hungry lord from unleashing a chaos god upon the world. I've been having a lot of fun world-building for this one, and I think maybe that's why I like fantasy so much. The possibilities are nearly endless. It started as a little seed of an idea about a creator with no paternal love for his creation and grew into this really big monster of a plot.

Hi my name is Kelly.I am a newbie and i decided to do nano this year because of the creating writing class i am taking in school. I still have no idea what im going to write about but i am sure that if i set this goal i can do it!

I'm a newbie! I had heard of NaNoWriMo before, but I always remembered about it at the end of November. This year, I'm ready to go!

I was glad to have attended the prep session on 10/15, and I feel very energized and ready to take on the NaNoWriMo challenge. I am telling lots of friends about it, so they'll keep me honest and keep me writing. I expect I'll be burning the midnight oil to get it done, but fortunately I love coffee.

This is the first time I'm describing my novel premise to anyone, so feel honored as you read this. Even my husband doesn't know:

A college student in need of money takes on a lucrative job as a personal assistant to a wealthy, older gentleman. Only after signing an unbreakable contract does he discover that his new employer is a 200-year-old vampire. Life-changing and life-threatening consequences ensue as he becomes entangled in his employer's dark family history while still trying to earn his degree.

I've got a good chunk of the book planned out in my mind, though I'm still not sure about the ending. Hopefully it'll unfold as I get going. Happy writing to you all! Hope to see you at some write-ins.

Hello! I'm Paula or catatone1. This is my fifth year nano. I was gonna participate in the journey this year (and failed to organize an event, sorry about that) but I got side tracked by life. but I'm staging a writing comeback this year despite everything i have to get done (like grad school applications and screening CD).

I'm a violinist, and that has influenced my nano this year to have a slightly music theme to it, as well as some influence from the novel The Phantom of the Opera.

It'll be good to see you all again and I'm looking forward to it!

I'm Becca and I'm totally a newbie. I'm from Glen Ellyn but am at school in Deerfield for my (hopefully) last semester at college. I'm getting my degree in Humanities and have no job lined up when I graduate.

I'm writing a novel (or the first part of a trilogy) that is heavily influenced by Tolkien. It's a fantasy novel about a young woman who is prophesied to save the world against demons.

My name is Jana, and I'm a first time participant this year. I am a speech and language pathologist in a nearby school district, and I'm excited! I've got a few different novel ideas that have been bouncing around in my head for years in different versions - stage play, script, novel, comic book - so we'll see what ends up on the page. I hope to make it to some of the write-ins to get that mutual support kicked into high gear!

So my name's Jayme, this is my second NaNo... I was here last year and my username was Jayme Rani but I'm not really sure what happened to that account so I ended up with this one and I don't really know what on earth happened. I have no clue what I'll be writing this month, I'm sad I can't go to the kick-off, and I'm hoping to make some of the write-ins this year!

Hello! My name is Linda and this is my sort-of second NaNo. I found out about NaNoWriMo when I saw a blurb in the Naperville Library newsletter last year about mid-November and figured, "What the heck." It was a dismal failure ending in only a couple thousand words, but that's a couple thousand more than I would have had! Last year I was going to write a novel about a DES daughter and her path to parenthood (titled DESpair). While it's a subject I'm passionate about, this year I've had a couple other plots needling at my psyche.

I've settled on writing about a girl growing up in the mid-40's/50's in a small Midwestern town. She marries her high school sweetheart to get away from home and travels the world with her military husband. In the end the husband is not who she thought he was and she divorces him, moves to the big city and becomes a secretary. In a very cliche move she falls in love with the (unhappily) married boss. After many conflicts (her family, his mother, the soon-to-be-ex wife, all their friends), they beat the odds and find happiness and a life together. I believe I will end with their wedding but that remains to be seen.

I guess I'm "breaking the rules" a bit since this is a semi-biographical but I will be taking many literary licenses with the characters. But this will be an "easier" story to write than the other one that's really been pulling at me. That is a story my mother told me about how, during WWII, she used to see the "feds" in their black sedans parked on the streets in her home town with wires running to the phone lines. They didn't attempt to hide the fact that they were listening in on conversations hoping to hear something incriminating and/or anti-American. And how the feds had every reason to be watchful of the people in their mainly German town. She would see her neighbors openly "goose-stepping" in the fields in military drills.

But I think I'll save that story for next year when I have more time to research the times and subjects.

This year, as I said in my profile, while I may not be actively employed, I made the decision to go back to college and take Web Programming courses. I thought they'd be a piece of cake given my programming background, but they're kicking my in the rear! Most days spent at my computer are writing code or reading the 1100+ page text book. When I'm not doing that I'm sending out resumes and applying for various jobs. So I'm going to dive in and participate anyway! At least this time around, if I'm up until the wee hours of the morning, after I get my 12 year old twins (turning 13 in November!) off to school I can drop back into bed and pass out for a couple more hours, instead of nodding off while I'm at work. My mother thinks I'm crazy and biting off more than I can chew. I'll show her! >:D

I'm Cindi. I'm a software developer, seminarian, guitarist, motorcyclist, and would-be author. I've failed miserably with novels six years in a row, and took last year off. This year, I'm rebelling and doing theological nonfiction.

Oh Hi! I'm Karen. Sophomore at NCC (Musical Theater Major. w00t)
This is..Technically my third year I think? I didn't do much last year, school having taken over, but I'm back with a vengeance (And a Utopian Sci-fi ISH novel).

Hi I'm Vicki and I'm calling this my first NaNoWriMo. (Only because I never really made it out of the starting gate when I first heard about it a couple years ago.) I am a counselor by training and within the last year left my counseling practice to start out on my own working with parents as a coach/consultant. I am also homeschooling my 12 year old...who, by the way, is the reason to commit to NaNo this year. He will be participating this year with his English Co-Op Class and I decided to write right along side him.

I have no idea what my novel will be about but I have a couple days to decide...right? My son is very excited to be participating and has his fantasy/sci-fi plot taking shape. However he won't be participating in the forums because I'm one of those mean moms who follows the rules set out by gmail, facebook and other forums not allowing anyone under 13 to participate in social aspects of the internet... (I know....call the authorities!)

Well, it seems like there's a couple of newbies out there, so I suppose I don't feel quite so terrible adding myself to that unfamiliar bunch. I'm Devon, and I'm an alcoholic. Oh, sorry, wrong group: I'm Devon and this is my first NaNoWritMo. I'm a 16 year old junior in highschool (witness me bowing down before your superiority in age and wisdom) and can only pray my writing isn't half that bad. It's better to degrade than to be narcissistic, no?
I hope to get my contemporary-sci fi-horror-supernatural spawn of a novel off the ground, having been preoccupied with a prior novel for over five years. I need a serious change of pace! I think I've a solid beginning, it's just the in-betweens I need to figure out. I'm hoping a time pressure might give me the kick I need.
A short summary of the plot: a fourteen year old prestigeous girl from Georgia joins up in the United State's 2nd civil war, where the east fights the west who have created demonic-like beasts from extraterrestrial materials found in Roswell, NM. It's a lot about breaking out of the shell she's been encased in (of upper class white society, the cream of the crop) and how she goes about once she finds herself naked (metaphorically, of course).

So nice to meet you all :)

hi! my name is rachel, and i'm sixteen, and i live in a town over from naperville. this is my third year doing nanowrimo, but i've never actually finished it before. usually i get distracted by school, and i give up.

i know how to use proper capitalization, but i just don't really like doing it. i have an unhealthy addiction to smilie faces, and i struggle with picking favorites. however, my favorite movie ever is the phantom of the opera. a+ movie/book/musical/etc. anyway.

my novel is a real life story about a girl who struggles to find herself in her town~. i'm not exactly sure how else to describe it, to be honest, but my novel synopsis is...

Kaelin Wellmen is almost absurdly normal. Her life is normal, her family is -- almost -- normal, her school is normal; she feels as if she was doomed to live in a perpetual state of normalcy. This is, of course, until Spring Break comes around, and a group of tourists come through, ready for a wild week of parties and fun.
Nathaniel Phillips, a stereotypical island tourist, decides that Kaelin Wellmen is exactly the change he needs from his everyday life. Kaelin is thrilled to finally be a part of something, but to actually be someone, she'll have to escape her personal bubble, and maybe go against some of her own personal beliefs to be someone different.

so yes! i'm hoping to attend some of the write-ins, or at least do something relatively social so i don't have to sit locked up in my room typing. (8

Hi, I'm 'Reader Dreamer' but you fellow Illinoisians get to call me Chloe if you wish. I'm 19 and felt seriously young skimming these introductions...until I read the last few posts. Now I don't feel so alone anymore. Anyways, I don't actually live in Naperville, but it's the closest thing to where I'm at.

Since everyone else is doing some summarizing of their novels, I guess I shall too. My novel takes place in an urban fantasy setting - no alternate universes or alternate Earth. But it will have mythology and religion mixed in there. I'm planning to have Rumpstiltskin, Pandora, and the Devil make appearances, not to mention vampires, dhampirs of my own design, and three witches who are my main characters. The key to this novel is that one of my witches is hard of hearing like me. I wanted to write a novel about a character who has hearing loss since there aren't that many novels like that out there. So yeah.

I'm a NaNo Newbie, and I can't believe I haven't done this before, since I have always wanted to write a book. Better late than never, I guess!