Lois & Clark Forums Forums Fan Fiction Fanfic Related NaNoWriMo 2007 - Let's get this party started!

Eeeehhhhhh!!! Got my first Chris Baty email (one of my favorite things about nano). I know it's getting close when he is starting his pep talk!

I *just* closed that email!

Now to find that door...
Carol

Jojo, I don't have that message in my inbox. Do I have to be signed up for email notifications to get it?

Sheilah, I think you do. You are gonna want to be signed up for it to because they have famous authors doing the pep talks this year as well. Here is his email for those of you who didn't get it (it tells you how to turn on notifications):

Dear NaNoWriMo participant

Well, we're on the cusp of another beautiful noveling November. The turn-out so far has been phenomenal. Between our main program and Young Writers Program, we'll have over 90,000 authors on board by the end of the week, making this officially the largest NaNoWriMo since the event was first adapted from an Andorran mule-wrestling ceremony back in 1999.

For those of you who are new to NaNo, I want to quickly run through the noveling schedule for the month ahead.

Step 1: Keep reading this email; learn the secret of NaNoWriMo.
Step 2: Wait for 12:01 AM local time on November 1.
Step 3: Write a novel.

No problem.

Okay, back to Step 1. The secret of NaNoWriMo. Which is this: There is a door in your brain. The door has been there your whole life. You may not have noticed it before because it blends in with everything else in your brain. Weird art. Mismatched furniture. Squis hy gray bits clinging to everything.

So what does this door have to do with your novel?

Your job this month is not so much writing a book (which is intimidating) as it is finding that door (which is easy).

It's easy because you'll have guides in November who will take you right to it.

These guides are also known as your characters. They're kind of an abstract notion now, but you'll meet them in all their glory in Week One of NaNoWriMo. They'll be a strange lot. Insecure warlocks. Stamp-collecting squirrels. Teenage detectives.

Whoever shows up, go with them. And go quickly. You may have a general sense of where you're going together; you may not. It doesn’t matter. Just write your allotment of 1667 words (or more) on November 1. Don't edit any of it. Editing is for December. Then come back and write another 1667 words the next day. And the next. And the next.

By Week Two, you'll be at the door. A few words later, you'll be through it. You'll know you're there because the writing will feel different. Less like work, and more like watching a gloriously imperfect movie with cringe-worthy dialogue, heaps of confusing tangents, and moments of brilliance so delightful that you'll want to scream.

Once you've stepped through that door into the vast reaches of your imagination, you'll be able to return there as often as you like. It's an enchanted, intoxicating place, and there are other great things besides novels in there.

But we'll talk about that later.

For now, here's our game plan for the coming week.

1) Make sure you've affiliated with a region and then made it your Home Region. This is a two-step process. You do it by signing in and then going to the My Regions page of My NaNoWriMo. The far-left tab gives you a list of regions to choose from. Choose one by clicking "affiliate," then go to the far-right tab called Home Region and make sure your region is ticked.

2) Make sure you have your Edit Profile settings geared to allow emails from us (if you got this, you're good), and that your email program knows to accept messages from noreply@nanowrimo.org. Pep talks from esteemed authors will begin landing in your inbox this week, and will continue to arrive every four days or so. To turn off emails from us, just head to Edit Profile and change your settings to "No mail."

3) On November 1: Begin writing. At this point, you'll be able to begin updating your word count on the Author Info tab of the Edit Profile page. You can do this on the honor system by just typing in the number, or you can paste the whole book in and let our robots count it for you. If you paste your book, please scramble it first, using instructions in our FAQ. You can also post an excerpt of your book in the same area of the Edit Profile page.

4) For the first week of the event, the site will be on fire. This year we moved to a completely new back-end system, and it has made me beat my head against the wall almost every single day. Pages disappear. Parts fall off. Error screens everywhere. It handles high traffic the way a country lane would handle a freeway. We have so many plans on rebuilding the site it for next year it's not even funny. But for now, we have to work with what we've got. Russ is making all the improvements he can to make it suck less.

If the site isn't functional, just postpone updating your word count until the dust settles. NaNoWriMo does not live on a website. It lives in your heart, in your powerful typing fingers, and in your dramatically escalating word count.

We'll keep working on the site. You keep working on your novel.

Together we will rock November.

Happy noveling, everyone! We're so glad to have you writing with us.

Chris
NaNoWriMo

You beat me, JoJo.

Carol [who is avoiding schoolwork by hitting refresh, constantly looking for new story parts]

My problem apparently is that something is wrong with my edit profile page. No matter what changes I try to put in it, nothing happens when I click submit.

However... I just checked my own email, and the letter from Chris is there, so the profile must have been set to default to it.

I hope.

Thanks, ladies

Oooh yay I'm wanted!

I think my number is: 221021

It's what I got at the end of the doodad address thingy from my profile. *nods*

*rocks back and forth back and forth*

Can't wait until midnight... must write now... the voices are talking, telling me to write write write ARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRG!!!

Man, and I won't even BE awake at midnight :p

OMG, I can't wait to start!!!!!

/takes a deep breath.

I managed to write on the way in to work on the train this morning. Couldn't find that Neo thing, so hand writing, longhand, in my notebook, with my friend sitting next to me trying to engage me in conversation at the same time. Even after I told her that I was going to ignore her for the trip and write.

So, 303 words... not bad. Now I'm gonna write like mad for the next hour. (Lunch time! Food? Who needs food? I'm *writing*! )

I can't wait either. (/takes a deep breath with Lara) But the more grading I do before I go to bed tonight, the less I'll have to do during the coming week, so the more time I'll have to write. Right?

Just stopped by to wish you guys good luck. I'm afraid I'm going to have to wait for next year. Damn. And I've been looking forward to this all year!

ML

I could start in an hour... as that is when it officially begins. BUT... I'm a bit tipsy and tired so it will have to wait till tomorrow.

*eeeeehhhh* Can't wait. ^_^

So I'd planned on starting at 12 ET, but I was good and waited till 12 here [actually, I was doing other stuff... but we'll pretend it was because I was good].

Then I did something I'd never done - wrote a middle of the fic scene. It popped into my head about 3 weeks ago, begging to be written and it finally is! Some of it I like better than I thought I would some of it worse, but that's how it goes. Another couple short scenes followed it and then I went back to the beginning of the fic where I discovered it wasn't in Kansas after all, but in Colorado... imagine that!

Anyway, 2,225 words today .

Off to bed! Work to do tomorrow...
Carol

Oooh! Carol! Way to go!!

Starting mine during my lunch hour today.

Heeeeeee!!

NaNo Name: Mr_d8a
Years Doing NaNo: First year
This Year's Genre: Sci Fi
This Year's Idea: A young man goes on a camping trip with his best friend and his friend's father. Did I mention that this is on another planet and they have a run in with something that is a cross between a bear and a porcupine that just happens to be a female with a cub?
Novel Title: No One to the Rescue?
Word Count Goal: 50k.

Based on a universe I created 22 years ago.

James.

I did another 2200 words or so this morning - unfortunately it was an insurance transcript *g*.

I hope to get some done this afternoon, but I also have other work to do... DH won't be home until 10pm tonight at which time I hope to be asleep as I've been up way too late lately, but that means I have other work I have to get done in the meantime...

Carol

NaNo Name: MrsMosley
Years Doing NaNo: this is my first
This Year's Genre: historical fiction
This Year's Idea: how a young couple came to be married during a flood in Mississippi in the 1920s
Novel Title: High Water
Word Count Goal: 50,000

I've been thinking for the last week that I wouldn't do NaNo after all because I've got so much stuff going on. Then, this morning, I read the email from the guy (the one Jojo quoted above) and thought, I can do 1667 words a day.

Heh.

I took an hour lunch (which is twice as long as I usually get) and only got about 700 words done. Argh. But now that I've started, I'm going to try to keep going!

Heee! I started. It's probably crazy to get excited like this just because I wrote a few words in a Word document while I was having soup and crackers, but... heh. I'll take all the excitement I can get.

I managed to get 510 words on the page in half an hour and I've even got myself a working title for now. ...and, I'm a bit annoyed that I had to close the file because I was just starting to feel it and had just gotten into that zone where my brain is on pause and my fingers do all the typing on their own. I love when that happens - my fingers are smarter than my brain!

Gotta go back to work. Looking forward to picking this up again this evening.

I hope you all have a GREAT first day!!!

Well I started trying to write at work today. I started off staring at a blank page and trying to get my LnC story rolling... when suddenly I jumped the boat and started writing and original story.

I figured if they were my own characters at least I could keep them in character.

I think as someone who struggles with writing large amounts it might be best for me to start off with original fiction since I can do just about whatever I want with it.

Anyway, I haven't gotten to write much and I'm at 550 words right now. So.. I'm confident I can hit my goal.

I could write more but sadly everyone at work decided to either be late today or not come in. So I'm off to the grind.