If you'd like to continue to be involved with writing after November end, there are several options within our region as well as outside it. You can expect to hear more about these at the TGIO party on Saturday, but here's a quick summary and where to go for further information.
- Participate in the Journey
This is a year-round writing group that decides what the goals for the upcoming year will be. There are usually some live meetings with writing exercises, jabber room chats, and a Mediawiki instance called 'The Journey'. Please contact NewMexicoKid if you are interested or respond to this thread. More information on the journey is available at: http://journey.naperwrimo.org/ - Join CritiqueCircle.com and work on revising a novel. (It can be an earlier one.)
I'm known as KatWrite on that site and am very active. If you join, send me a message and I'll look for your submissions. The system works by your critiquing other people's work in order to earn credits which are required to be able to post your stories for others to critique. I've been doing it for years and find it very useful.
http://www.critiquecircle.com/queue.asp - Join the Wednesday evening Caribou keep-on writing group. This is organized by Heather (AmaranthMuse). Or suggest another date/time and place that suits you to organize another keep-on writing group. Details will be at: http://naperwrimo.org/events
(Just contact KatherineWriting to have your event added to the page--although we will probably change the title in January.) - Start a forum topic page on something that interests you about writing that you think others might be interested in.
- Join the Editing Month group (in March):
http://www.nanoedmo.net/xoops2/
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Dec 3, 2010 - 10 33
Excellent suggestions on the whole.
Behind the Name: This website offers plenty of cultural or literary sources for names, and there are different generators there to allow you to search for certain criteria like number of syllables, masculine or feminine, etc.
Word of caution: Be mindful many of the meanings of baby names on many sites are not well documented or backed up. While some (like "Savannah" or "Ashley") are fairly easy to back up because they are compounds in the English language, the etymology for a lot of common names is fairly dubious. If you are utterly attached to a name because of its implicit meaning and that has a lot of importance in your book, be careful because many books and websites give no sources. :)
----------NaNoWriMo region: Ferndale, MI | Naperville, IL
Genres: Urban contemporary; fantasy, sci-fi; speculative; historical
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Dec 2, 2010 - 09 29
Okay, I'm one of those crazy people who obsesses with my character names so here are the sites I love to go to:
Parenthood.com's Baby Name page: It lets you search by meaning or name or by what letter(s) the name starts and ends with. I like it because it tells the ethnicity of the name as well as it's gender (I'm horrible for wanting to give men women names and vice versa.)
Social Security Administration's Popular Baby Names: You can find out the top 1000 names for each gender in any year after 1879 as well as find out how popular a name is in any year after 1879. Great for finding out if your names are too unique or to find a name that's appropriate for a character born in a certain year.
USA Census of Last Names: List of last names ordered by popularity. It beats going through the phone book or an old year book to find last names.
Fantasy Name Generator: For those times when your story doesn't take place on earth. It spits out halfway decent names quickly so you don't have to waste too much time.
I also google my main characters' names to make sure that there isn't already another popular character or celebrity with the same name.
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Dec 2, 2010 - 07 27
Now's a good time to think about character names and make the names of your characters better fit who they ended up being, especially if in the fast pace of November, you dropped in someone's 'real' name just to avoid having to pause to make up a name, or used a few variations of a name.
Ditto with place names. If you'd made them up, are any place names too close to a character's name? Or some other element in your system? If the names are real, did you really want to have your characters on Hawaii, or would Maui suit the tone better? (Right now I really wish I'd written about Maui.)
While many people, myself included, prefer to wait a few weeks or a month before revising the content, I'm still thinking about my characters anyway, so now seems like a good time to pick some new names. Dragonbait, for example, really needs something better. (I'm writing mainstream fiction, but it was fun to refer to him that way for the first draft. I never confused him with another character.)
Now, do I rename Buddy? (He's a main character's best bud, which might actually be fine. Have to think about that one.)
I'm sure there are a lot of great sites to find meanings of names. I never bother to remember the sites, just Google when I want to find out the meaning of names.
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Nov 28, 2010 - 19 05
Hi, Janet,
The Writer's Voice workshop will likely be rescheduled; we'll focus on the Journey at the January 8th meeting and have the Writer's Voice Workshop later in January (if anyone wants to suggest a date, I'll go ahead and reserve the room at the Eola Road branch library in Aurora). I suggest this for two reasons:
--Tim
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Nov 28, 2010 - 18 52
Will the writer's voice workshop be on the 1/8 meeting?
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Nano 2010: Cloud on Title
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Nov 28, 2010 - 14 25
I did not read this thread before contacting NewMexicoKid. I would like to participate in the Journey. CJEGV
Carol J. Gaus
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Nov 28, 2010 - 11 57
Just a note: these are not mutually exclusive options ;-). In particular there is a social component to the Journey that we hope many will participate in. Also, the projects of the Journey depend on the interests of the participants. The first Journey meeting will be January 8th.
There is also National Novel Finishing Month in December.
And we are going to offer a writer's voice workshop in January.
--Tim
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