Today is day four. If you’re going by the 1667 words per day method, ideally you should be at 6668 by the end of the day. Of course, the weekend is approaching, so if you are under this total, there is still plenty of time to make it up, especially if you go to one or more of the write-ins (ah, the miracle of word wars!).
Welcome to the region! I am Tim (aka NewMexicoKid); along with Katherine (KatherineWriting) and Dave (TRRDEDEAN), I am one of the volunteer co-Municipal Liaisons who are here to answer your questions and help you achieve success in your goal to write your novel this year. Feel free to send Katherine or me nanomail or just reply to this e-mail.
Sad News
Our deep condolences go out to Dave (TRRDEDEAN); his mother passed away earlier this week. Understandably, Dave’s attentions are elsewere right now, so please direct your questions to Katherine and me.
Weekend write-ins
as shown on our google calendar and on our events page, we have four write-ins coming up this weekend: three on Saturday and one on Sunday (Sunday is at the 95th Street Library, 1-4 pm). Congratulations to Crystal, Amy and Paula for winning three of the precious plot bunnies in word wars at Monday’s Eola Road branch library write-in. There will be more plot bunnies given away to word war winners Sunday at the 95th Street Library.
Monday will see two write-ins: one 9-11:30 am at Caribou Coffee hosted by Katherine; and a virtual one in our jabber chatroom 7:45 pm-9 pm that I will host.
What is a write-in? What are plot bunnies?
Don’t know what a write-in is? Wondering whether it might be useful to you? Have you never seen a plot bunny? Check out the answers here on our blog.
What is jabber? What’s a virtual write-in?
glad you asked! Jabber is a common name for XMPP, the instant messaging protocol that underlies, among other things, google talk and the chat that you can do from your google mail. We have a jabber chatroom that you can use to type messages to each other; it is equipped with a jabber bot that can time your word wars (once you’re in the room, type: word_war help). Need an account? Send nanomail to NewMexicoKid and I’ll get you set up.
Illinois statewide write-in
timSimms, ML of neighboring Chicago, just announced the November 20 (11 am-2 pm) Statewide Write-in (third annual; we actually hosted the very first of these events) in downtown Chicago. RSVP here. Last year’s event was lots of fun and pretty-well attended.
WAIT! I NEED HELP!
Having just assisted (in a jabber chat) Jennifer_Ryukage (one of our experienced wrimos) with a plot problem, I can gues sthat there are some of you out there who have hit a snag in your noveling. Maybe you’re not happy with your chosen plot. Maybe your main character decided to run away. Don’t give up! Don’t throw away your wordcount! Instead, head over to the Adoption Society forum. You can find plots, characters, titles and other useful story elements to incorporate into your story or even (at this early stage) use to completely replace your own.
You are also welcome to stop by the jabber chatroom for more personalized help. And there are other helpful forms on the nanowrimo site (just don’t spend all your time there 😉 ).
Set your home to Naperville
during November, it’s fun to compare Illinois::Naperville’s progress against all the regions in the world, both in word count and donations. Please show your pride in our region by making sure your successes are included in our regional totals. To do this, you need to affiliate with Naperville AND set Naperville as your Home Region.
It’s a relatively painless process:
- If you’re not affiliated with Naperville: Log in and click My NaNoWriMo, then click My Regions. On the All Regions tab, locate Illinois::Naperville, and click Join. Then click Join again.
- If you are already affiliated: Do not pass Go. Proceed directly to the Home Region tab. On the Home Region tab, click the circle beside USA::Illinois::Naperville, and click the Set Home Region button near the bottom of the screen.
Regional word count graph
do you like to see how you’re doing relative to others in the region? If so, the regional word count graph is for you. Just post your genre, brief synopsis and a snippet of your text in this thread to join in the fun.
Regional stats
(from http://www.nanowrimo.org/eng/node/200/info)
- There are 691 Wrimos in this region (active and homed) – 60% are new to NaNoWriMo
- 2.60% of Wrimos in this region have donated 680.00 so far (thank you!)
- Wrimos in this region have written 1,258,590 words (3,933 per Wrimo with wordcount)
Book drive
as you know, the Office of Letters and Light is trying to raise funds for NaNoWriMo and the Young Writer’s Program through the Great NaNoWriMo Book Drive. xaanterra (Sara) is our volunteer book-driver-in-chief. Our goal is to get to 3000 books donated for the region.
I’m not sure what our current total is for the book drive; I suspect xaanterra (Sara) hasn’t had time to update her count since the haul from the kick-off party (probably too busy working on her novel!). If you have books to donate, watch for instructions from Sara as to which write-ins to bring them to.
Donations to OLL
NaNoWriMo is a free event; there’s no charge to register, no charge to use the forums, no charge to attend our local events. But, just like PBS and NPR, the nonprofit OLL (the sponsoring organization) does have bills. It pays for the servers and software that run the forums, the people who maintain those, the staff who mostly invisibly run the whole organization and manage the volunteer Municipal Liaisons, and the beautiful stickers that each of you can receive by going to an official write-in (one hosted by an ML). Please consider giving back with a donation to the OLL.
Hey! I’m still reading–is there more?
amazingly, yes! Ahem! You can find a lot of helpful links at http://www.nanowrimo.org/eng/node/3700830
Ok. That’s it. I’m done. 🙂
Thanks for reading down to the end.
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