At the end of today, November 15th, half of this precious month will be in the history books. I hope that it has been a memorable fifteen days, filled with productive writing sessions, fun write-ins and many new friends. Oh, and I hope that the end of the day finds you with at least 25,000 words in your novel, as that would be the “on-track” word count to get to 50,000 words by the end of the month.
Hi, for those of you new to this Naperville region, I’m Tim aka NewMexicoKid; with Dave (TRRDEDEAN) and Katherine (KatherineWriting), I am one of three volunteer co-Municipal Liaisons who are here to answer your questions and help you succeed in your NaNo quest and have fun while doing so.
I can see that there are many whose wordcounts are below 25,000 (some quite a ways below). What I want to tell you is: don’t give up. Yes, it will take some days with huge wordcounts to catch up; but it is doable. My first year doing NaNo, I was down 15,000 words with three days to go and I managed to squeak through.
Here are some tips:
- Have you turned off your internal editor? (In general) you should not be going back to correct mistakes (either spelling errors or plot fixes). If you need to make a major plot change, just note it with meta text (which also counts; everything you write for your story in November counts) and move on.
- Have you joined the regional word count graph? Just visit http://www.nanowrimo.org/eng/node/3800250 and follow the directions to join. Some people find it quite a motivation to try to move up into the safe colored rows.
- Have you come to some write-ins? Engaging in word war sprints with other writers can be quite fun and inspirational. Note that we have virtual write-ins; there is one scheduled for Monday from 7:45 pm-9 pm; and there are folks almost every evening in the jabber chatroom. Need an account? Just NaNoMail NewMexicoKid to ask for one.
- Need some plot doctoring? Check out the Plot Doctoring forum; there you can find people to give you advice on how to fix your plot. There are many good information resources on the NaNo site and on our regional wiki.
- Take the time to write about inspirational potatoes (this helpful tip from Jennifer_Ryukage). Jen, this spud’s for you 🙂
Challenge to Calgary!
Well, it is a bit further into the month than is usual for us, but we have flung down the friendly gauntlet to the Alberta::Calgary region, courtesy of Barry (aka FinbarrMcG and our Official Regional Challenger). They have been neck and neck with us thus far into the month; let’s show them some Naperville-styled acceleration and write lots of words in the coming days! You are also welcome to do a little friendly, lighthearted bantering in the challenge thread.
Oh, did I mention? It is a whole-region, average wordcount word war–everyone’s words count, so write, write, write! What’s at stake (besides our pride at never having lost since our region’s founding in 2005)? The losing region has to sing the winning region’s song…
Hey, check out France from 2008 and Birmingham-West Midlands (UK) and Belgium-Holland (2009).
New to the region?
If you are new to the region, check out the welcome thread and Introduce yourself.
The Great Bookdrive and NaNoWriMo
NaNoWriMo and the sponsoring non-profit organization the Office of Letters and Light (OLL) are trying to raise funds for their Young Writer’s Program through a a book drive. Contact Sara Bolds (aka xaanterra) for information on how you can donate your gently used books.
We also hope you will consider donating directly to the OLL. Hosting the servers and organizing NaNoWriMo takes a lot of money. They can use your support.
TGIO Party
It’s not too early to mention that there will be a big, fun pot-luck lunch party December 4th to celebrate the (hopefully successful) end to National Novel Writing Month. Whether you succeed or not, I hope you’ll consider coming out to celebrate. We’ll post an RSVP thread soon.
Local merchandise
Just to mention we have a Cafepress shop with nifty local merchandise; the sales from these help to defray our local expenses (which come out of our own ML pockets as we are purely volunteers and receive no funds from the OLL).
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