Update on the Journey

We have twenty three members (there are more than that on the e-mail list but these are the folks who have added themselves to the members list on the wiki). There are three major projects for the Journey:

• Anthology 1: an anthology of short stories based on a common first line (16 participants)
• Anthology 2: an anthology of short stories based on a common theme (like Infinite Monkeys). There are 14 partipants.
• Chapter book: a web-only anthology of first chapters from novels. This one has 10 participants.

I am thrilled to have the Journey be so active, an improvement over last year’s successful Pledge. We are also pursuing a social activities Path, a writer’s conference Path and a Revision Path.

Did you miss out on joining the Journey but are interested? Contact me and I can help you.

And Belgium and Holland pay off their bet…!

Today I received this wonderful e-mail from Arike, one of the MLs for Belgium and Holland:

Dear Tim, other MLs and participants of Naperville,

First off, a very happy new year to you! We hope you’ve a had some good holidays, family time and rest, and we wish you the very best for 2010.

Once upon a November, Naperville neatly beat Holland and Belgium in a word war. The stakes were to sing the other region’s song, and so we did, at a late TGIO party. Several of those gathered to raise their glasses in celebration volunteered to do our best in a rendition of your song. We were well prepared: computer, mike, lyrics and example of the song were all there, so we gathered round for a few practice rounds. You can imagine how those practice rounds went in a crowded pub. We crashed and burned rather spectacularly. In reparation, we also offer you a song of St Nicholas (our Santa Claus, who comes on December 5th). We hope you like it, and we apologise to any sensitive musical ears that might be listening. We hope we entertained you a little, at least. We enjoyed the word war loads, hope that you did too, and once again happy new year from this side of the big pond!

Cheers,

Arike

I’ve posted the mp3 on our 2009 TGIO and word war results page. Thank you!

–Tim

TGIO 2009

We had nearly 50 people attending this year’s fun TGIO (Thank-Goodness-It’s-Over!) party at the Naperville Municipal Center lunch room. Things mostly went very smoothly, though I forgot to give out a prize for best colored-in Dragon Map (doh! I even brought one…). David got us going with a NaNo-bingo (with custom squares and different sheets) that was a lot of fun to do; people had to get signatures from folks based on word-count (tough!), title, handle or odd fact.

The pot-luck was great–there was a lot of delicious food.

Many thanks to Katherine, Barry, and Sabrina for the beautiful double-sided, hand-crafted memory poster; and thanks as well to all who attended for signing it! I will cherish this forever:

Thanks as well to David for the insightful book “Walking with Alligators”! I know it will be invaluable to keeping inspired and on track with my writing this coming year.

Katherine provided nice purple “Winners!” (dark chocolate) bars for all of the NaNo participants; and I prepared the 3×5 awards cards (that fit neatly in the NaperWriMo hipster PDA deck). Among the door prizes given out: the final proof copy of Infinite Monkeys (our 2009 Pledge project, now on sale at Amazon.com), three index card books (with hand-drawn dragon covers), three signed posters and a custom-designed cover by yours truly for the lucky winner’s novel.

Here is our TGIO rendition of Typing Away Again Near Dear Ol’ Naperville (includes a link to the UK::Birmingham-West Midlands 2009 Regional Word War bet payment):

We’re still expecting a song from Belgium and Holland; hopefully it will come soon. Stay tuned…

Here are pictures from the 2009 TGIO:

2009 TGIO for Illinois::Naperville

And the signed TGIO poster:

Our year-round (well, January-September) writing group looks to have a strong start–many of those attending the TGIO expressed interest in it. More to come in the weeks to follow.

Happy holidays!
–Tim

A funny cartoon from HannahK

HannahK, a talented and winning wrimo from Holland, has been writing brilliant little cartoons all month long. Today she posted this gem:

———-

Nu ook Dutch NaNo Team 2009 merchandise!!

Very funny (even if we don’t wear nappy’s in Naperville)!

–NMK

What a great finish!

So there we were in the jabber chatroom. little_shakespeare and liveluvlaugh07 had popped by, as had JenniferRyukage and KatherineWriting; but at the very end it was just TRRDEDEAN, ajey and me. I was mostly writing because I was afraid we might lose the regional word war and because TRRDEDEAN and ajey both had writing goals they wanted to meet: Dave (TRRDEDEAN) wanted to pass by bookgrrl and ajey wanted to win, after being down in the 20k range with four days to go. His progress had been phenomenal; I think he had closed to 44k by the start of Monday.

With just a couple minutes to spare before midnight, I was just 40 words below my goal of 75k for the month. AJ, however, while he had just passed 50k, had difficulty validating. Fortunately, all turned out ok and ajey now sports the coveted purple bar!

What a writing month! Every NaNoWriMo is a bit different. This one didn’t have the last minute regional word war drama we had faced with France, Ottawa and Montreal (though Birmingham-West Midlands and Holland/Belgium had huge comebacks near the end); the jabber chat room, while active early, was only modestly active by the end of the month. On the other hand, we had tremendous success percentage wise.

Here are the stats:

• Number of affiliated people = 499
• Number of active people = 254 (50%)
• Number of Naperville (region-homed) folks = 299 (59%)
• Number of active Naperville folks = 162 (32%)
• Number of Naperville folks with titles = 130 (43%)
• Number of Naperville folks with posts = 98 (32%)
• Total affiliated regional wordcount = 8495613
• Total region-homed regional wordcount = 6138563
• Average wordcount (affiliated) = 17025.28
• Average wordcount (Naperville) = 28413.42
• Average wordcount (active) = 33447.30
• Average wordcount (active Naperville) = 52442.06
• Num of those > 50K words (Naperville) = 84
• Num of winners (Naperville) = 80
• Num of donors (Naperville) = 38

This means that an amazing 49% of active, region-homed Naperville participants won.

From the NaperWriMo wordcount graph,

• Total wordcount: 3574387
• Average wordcount: 51062.67
• Wordcount standard deviation: 158.05
• % Active (non-zero wordcount): 98.6% (70/71) – (compared with 36.1% internationally)
• % Winners (wordcount>50k): 77.5% (55/71)
• % Winners of Active (wordcount>50k): 78.6% (55/70) (compared with 30.38% internationally)
• % 40k+ (wordcount>40k): 77.5% (55/71)
• % Returning: 40.8% (29/71)
• % Returning Who Won: 31.0% (22/71)
• % Returning Who Won of Active Returners: 75.9% (22/29)
• % of Winners who were Returners: 40.0% (22/55)

So an even more amazing 77.5% of those who added themselves to the NaperWriMo scanpost wordcount graph won.

Congratulations!

Congratulations to all the validated winners region-homed in Naperville!
KatherineWriting, TRRDEDEAN, bookgrrl, loki125, cfrech, someone1001, seraphimcrux, LemonFairy, EllieHugh, Roger Lubeck, DJRM, mongrelvw, Nitrocat, NewMexicoKid, sweetnightingale, LadyJealousy, Larkk, ACFalk, xxthefanxx, rubyliveshere, rebel_cheese, _Suzie_Q_, chrisirwin, redcod323, liveluvlaugh07, R.Mat2010, Live4him56, thoughtlounge, Gothessa, Little L, Lara Harrison, little_shakespeare, BenWahrman, well. what now., CobaltSnow, MahouBunnyBell, bernakins, ViolaLover, par2323, hross99, Jennifer_Ryukage, Lingonberry99, TiinanoNinja, babsy55, AshleyK, Shadowednavi, oze, TeenWriter, journey, JacknDiane, Cholma, Lady Taliesin, AmaranthMuse, PersiaRose, FinbarrMcG, jennster55, wordrebel, catatone1, tireddadx3, samcadams, KaityGirl, jangogh, tregina12000, pesky-psion, elbakerone, Alura Embrey, writeprice, EmperorSeth, ladyrock87, jlosacco, skowar, Shaoin, Utopiaswriter, barkle, hopelesswarning, Sheeva, Bricklayer, Ajey, Bayfield, marthajoy, serenosaur, JVal, Silrini, books, Westerly
wick, cassidyone, dreamhigher, Shingetsu, kat16, xaanterra, horatio, Buckar007, jannie_delta, Whitey, tomster, Grayraven, Bag, Ruth Ann Nelson, Rikka, Tokaara, ziplizard, Foxtrot838, Loki478, cfbrunner, mrnorton, CameronDaye, lauraelisabeth, sari_anne, susswrite and DianaArtemis

Congratulations also to those with > 50k; however, I sent you nanomail (check the instructions there) because I see that you didn’t validate: Proffesor_Von_Stuben, Taillefer (even though you were homed to Chicago ), OnceUponATime19, dragonsaege, and ktopel.

And congratulations to the validated winners in other regions:
InspectorStevi, Odakota-Rose, Dichotomy6958, Meadowman, Aquadeo, TimSimms, slrphebos, callalily05, somedayarealwriter, Emily Charlotte, BetsyD, fdahlman, foil, ElvishThistle, sparkletwist, Oh.Dear., stout_chap, musicislife15, Hobbit27, Azh, dragondivine, Arike, el.di.cr, KayTi, jesswiz, misslissylou, unspeakable, imbringinsexyback101, Mary Kowalski, Lofweir, sanity.is.overrated, Jadeblue, Chris Baty, Lita2369, classic., SarahJanet, cruelestmonth, bruciebaby, MacaroniCheese, and cachinna!

Finally, congratulations to everyone who tried and wrote. I know how difficult it is to find/make time; and sometimes (all too often) real life intervenes. The fact that you wrote means something. And I hope that you will find time to finish your stories.

TGIO Party

TGIO = Thank Goodness It’s Over! This is our fun lunch party in the Lunch Room of the Naperville Municipal Center. Be sure to RSVP in the RSVP thread. It’s a pot-luck lunch, so please plan to bring a dish or drinks or something. Guests and family are welcome! Note that you don’t have to be a 50k winner to attend; plan to RSVP and come on out–we will celebrate everyone who participated!

Among the door prizes will be the proof copy from our 2009 Pledge short story anthology Infinite Monkeys!

The fun starts at 11:45 am and continues to 3 pm. Bring your stuffed animal and wrimorock! And, if you like, bring a one page excerpt of your story (with enough copies to hand out–check the RSVP thread for the number to print).

Regional Word War Victory!

Thanks to all of you, Naperville has prevailed and protected its unbroken win streak. Mighty Birmingham-West Midlands and the nations of Holland and Belgium made very valiant (and, at times, scarily effective) comebacks but fell short in the end.

• over Birmingham-West Midlands by 1697 words per wrimo
• over Holland and Belgium by 1830 words per wrimo

What was at stake? Recall that we had boldly bet each region that whichever region loses the word war will have to sing the regional song of the winning region; and record themselves doing it! This is what France so charmingly did for us when they lost last year. See our regional song (and word war history).

We look forward to receiving two new entries this year

Toronto, Montreal, Ottawa, France, UK::Birmingham-West Midlands and Holland-Belgium. Wow. I am humbled!

The Journey

What to do after NaNoWriMo? Consider joining our year-round (‘cept in November) writing group, the Journey. See this forum posting for details. Note: you don’t have to be local to participate!

Donations

Donations to NaNoWriMo help keep the servers running and the event organized, so please consider helping out this non-profit organization.

–Tim