Congratulations
First, congratulations to all those in our region who won. KatherineWriting (201228), The Peddler of Dreams (125713) and WritingStudent (122222) finished with the top three wordcounts in our region’s wordcount graph.
The other winners from our region’s wordcount graph: KatherineWriting, The Peddler of Dreams, WritingStudent, writertodd07, mongrelvw, TRRDEDEAN, Larry72367, waking521, Asreena, sepiahistory, David L Hayes, sarastirsyou, Cee-Bee, kheartsfan96, tireddadx3, Eternal Light, Nidia.Ceylon, mochomito, Sapphire, Dreamhigher2010, scrapacat, Qberty, Conceptually, Anobi, Alura Embrey, midwestraised, PBJ63010, YeungJeans, MMMoreau, Corrupted Flame, brosenb2, TeenWriter, Basil Cliffside, cableshaft, TogetherAgain, ThePiratess, Suenor, tregina12000, EmilyAdelle, Juliette06, samcadams, ziplizard, fdahlman, jen.e.moore, Easily-Amused, Archon_Huskie, NewMexicoKid, Roger Lubeck, Antivard, RobinM, Phoenixica24, nowhereliz, Amy33, steve.the.redbird.fan, adavaughan, ethompson299, Bessie Spot, MelissaDuncan, skowar, horatio, ashesonfire, LemonFairy, osruipurple. For those of you not on our region’s graph, congratulations to you too–alas, we don’t have any visibility of your result if you aren’t on the graph (not too late to sign up).
Statistically, the folks on our region’s wordcount graph achieved a mean of 45K words written, with 63 of 96 winning: a 65% win percentage!
Thank Goodness It’s Over Parties
We have two fun options for the TGIO Party. The main one is our traditional pot-luck lunch party Saturday, December 8th at the Naperville Municpal Center (rooms BC in the lower level), 11:45 am-3 pm. Please RSVP if you are planning to attend so we can prepare your certificate and enter you in the raffle for the NaNo poster(s). You can also let us know what dish you’re bringing and any guests who will be coming (it’s fun–bring your friends and family!). Don’t forget to bring your stuffed animal for the group photo and games for the end of the afternoon!
For those who can’t make it Saturday, Katherine is organizing a dinner out at the East China Inn in Warrenville, 6:30 pm, Thursday, December 13th. Please RSVP so Katherine can make the reservations.
18K NaNoBot Challenge
Congratulations to all who signed up and wrote for the 18k NaNoBot Challenge! Alex (mochomito) won the NaNoBorg by writing 39985 words in the final week of NaNoWriMo. Robin (RobinM) came a close second (you should see her wordcount graph!) with 37845 words. Katherine (KatherineWriting) followed with 34562. Twenty of twenty two participants won NaNo; sixteen of the twenty two wrote more than eighteen thousand words in one week. If you’ve won a nanobot, don’t forget to let me know if you want eyes and arms on yours. Thus far I’ve heard from tireddadx3, TogetherAgain, RobinM, TRRDEDEAN, Sapphire, KatherineWriting with their preferences.
Journey
Existing and new members of the Journey: please post in this thread and fill out the survey form. The Journey is our year-round writing group and we have an exciting slate of Paths that are already starting to shape up for 2013.
One thing I’ve seen over and over again in our forum is that folks love the cameraderie and support of the members of our great region. You all are great people! This is one of the driving reasons why we created the Journey; it gives us continued opportunities to interact throughout the year.
Artists in our region should also consider the Journey as we are adding an Art Path in 2013.
Continuing to Write Your Novels?
Eternal Light has posted a support thread in our forum for all those who are continuing to write their novels.
If I get some time over the break, I want to write the external wordcount tracking tool that will allow us to set up arbitrary duration projects (Paths) and show people’s progress on joint wordcount/progress charts. If anyone has php (I’ll be using the Yii Framework), CSS, web design and/or javascript expertise and would like to help out, please NaNoMail me.
Donations still needed
Our region has donated a total of $1185 (which, if you consider the 496 participants, comes to $2.39 per wrimo) thus far. I hope you will consider helping out.
Acknowledgements
I want to thank my co-MLs Katherine and Dave for all of their tremendous efforts this year. Thanks also to all the wonderful volunteers who helped to organize other write-ins in our region: Cee-Bee (Woodridge), SarahK06 (Carol Stream), Sapphire and Corrupted Flame (Downers Grove), The Piratess and Squiddish (West Chicago/Warrenville/Winfield/Wheaton/Glen Ellyn), midwestraised (Hoffman Estates), CJEGV (Lombard), sepiahistory (Kane County), PBJ63010 (Orland Park), ziplizard (Naperville), Addison Sheffield-Clark (Downers Grove). Thanks also to Scrapacat and The Peddler of Dreams for hosting so many of the jabber chat write-ins.
We also want to gratefully acknowledge the wonderful support by Lisa West of the Naperville Public Library, Denise Murray of the Woodridge Public Library and Mary Kay Biernacki in the City Manager’s Office in Naperville.
Thanks also to Roger Lubeck (Roger Lubeck) and Tom Ostler (tomster) for facilitating two of the three October prep sessions.
Feedback?
Please keep an eye out for our survey; we’ll send a brief one out soon. In the meantime, feel free to let us know if you have any suggestions for how we can improve the experience for folks next year.
Thanks for reading to the end!
Tim aka NewMexicoKid, with Katherine (KatherineWriting) and Dave (TRRDEDEAN), one of the three volunteer co-Municipal Liaisons for USA::Illinois::Naperville that represents the cities and suburbs west of Chicago.
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