UNM: Tropes and English 423

OK, I think the only way for us to all get to be on each other's friend's lists is to post. So I'm posting. It's the only writing I'm doing tonight...

Wow, this website sucks. Seriously. And then they have the gall to ask for money on the front page. Whatever, jerks, buy some bandwidth with the money you have, stop making the site nigh unusable to make up for your shortcomings, and...ah.

I'm posting here so that Brian can add me as a friend if he feels so inclined. Brian, you haven't given up already , have you? Why haven't we heard from you even once? Where are you? Our whole class knows you're doing this! You will have to face them!

James and I got together at Denny's last night, and I stayed there writing till about 2 a.m., though not just on my novel. T.J., Brian, you guys should come next time, if you can.

Mike

RE: Website issues

They are well aware of the problems, and there have been many posts letting us users know that they are working on them. Please be patient, they want functionality as much as the rest of us.

Mike, James, T.J.

I have arrived. I also found the site slow. But, to avoid the rush I took the weekend off. It looks like Mike has set the bar for words. Fantastic Mike!

Hey UNM friends, what, you think those novels are going to write themselves? Let's see those word counts move a little!

You should be averaging 1,667 words a day. I missed three days, but I just caught up. You can too! You should be closing in on 17,000 words by now. Sound daunting? Well it ain't gonna get less so! C'mon, c'mon, we're supposed to motivate one another here. Let's do this! Your ideas are all too good to ignore! Your books need birthed into the world! Come on, let's go! Let's go! Let's go!

James: off the phone with the ladyfriend. Brian: put the kids down and drink some coffee. That's what I do. T.J.: it's time to disappoint some realty people.

Come on you guys, don't make me do this alone! Because I will, and it won't be as fun. We've all a lot going on, but we knew that when we started this.

By the way, you guys wanna get together this weekend sometime? Write at a Denny's? Let's talk. And type.

Mike_Smith, I'm not in your group either. But I'm glad to see that you're advocating safe parenting practices, such as putting your children down *before* consuming the hot coffee. UNM must really be teaching those critical thinking skillz.

I'm not sure if it's literary enough for you people, especially since it doesn't have a name that includes a word "tropes," (or any name at all, actually, as far as I know), but people will theoretically be meeting at the Frontier at 3pm on Sunday for not-very-chatty writing and fending off of spare-changers. The more dorks the merrier.

Hey Xiguli--

That's great, thanks for the invite. I'll try to make it there this afternoon. Cool. I guess I'll look for a bunch of people with laptops, probably by the only outlet in the place, on the streetside of the far room.

LATER:

That is--I was going to go, but my wife just absent-mindedly took my cars with her and now I'm stranded at home. Ergh. Next week, maybe. Also, I really enjoyed the excerpt of your novel. Very cool, and especially good for a first draft.

--Mike

Tropes friends, where are you?

lol, that's some enthusiastic encouragement.

Don't worry, you're not doing this alone. Check around the regional forum some. I know that there are several events and write-ins in ABQ. There are plenty of writers getting together, it's just a matter of place and time.

happy noveling!.

Hey Mike,
I am still around dude. I have had a really messy weekend, but I am getting back into it today, so hopefully my word count will shoot up exponentially by the end of the day. I am actually going to work really hard on my novel today. Don't worry dude, I am still totally committed.

Is anyone up for Denny's by campus around 9?

If not tonight, perhaps Monday night, later like 10 or 11?

Hit me up, anyone who is interested.

James

James--

Monday night late sounds good to me. Would ten o'clock work for you? If so, post it here, and we might get some of this other UNM crowd along as well. I got an e-mail from one of them (Xiguli), and they seem to me like an all-right bunch.

Don't worry, man, I have total faith in you--and in all our group--I know we can do this! Any razzing I engaged in was purely of the good-natured motivational variety, I promise.

Everyone else (and the Tropes posse)--

To the group, and to all New Mexicans navigating this sometimes-hard-to-use site, here's a link to a page of ALL OF THE NEW MEXICO NANOWRIMO FORUMS:

http://www.nanowrimo.org/eng/node/49

There are probably five that I saw right off about UNM, just on the first page. People are meeting up at Annapurna and elsewhere. We are not alone, though this forum is at the top of the list for some reason.

Tropes friends (T.J., Brian, James)--

I just met my daily word count and then some, with a rambling piece that may be excised completely from the next draft, but it brought about a lot of good ideas. And I'm having a good time. I've been really happy to discover that I can add writing a 50,000 novel in one month to my schedule without my schedule changing too horrifically. I think I was writing a lot anyway, and now this is just fun writing, especially since getting past the days I got far behind.

I swear I could write anything to Nightmares On Wax. What a chill yet rockin' outfit. Man.

There's a general consensus I've read and heard that this is the hardest week--the second week, so just hang in there, friends. Last week was a new experience, and next week you're heading downhill toward the finish, and this...well, I think it's all right, but maybe the uniqueness is wearing off for one or more of you. Just decide to do it NO MATTER WHAT, and then everything that gets in the way of your goal is just another WHAT, just another something that doesn't matter. That was all the personal philosophy I was able to get out of a transcontinental charity hike I undertook several years ago, and though it's not much it's served me well so far.

Let's see those word counts move, everyone! This is not The Month In Which You Slept A Lot--this is The Month You Wrote A Novel! Sit down! Type! No, not e-mail! Your book! Type! It's Day 11, and you should be somewhere around 18,337 words, though don't let that freak you out. Just write something, anything, of any length. Let's hear a good old stream-of-consciousness rant about why exactly friends are so fun and easy to make. You can give it to some character probably, and that's good for at least a thousand words. So come on!

I need motivation, too, but I'm not inspired by inaction. Inspire me already!

--NaNoMiko

Hey Everyone,

Well, I'm just above quota now, Day 14; 1,667 words a day. To be on track, people should have around 23,338 words written by now. I've got...I don't know, a little more than that.

I'm telling you, friends, get caught up, and the panic and the dread will abate. It doesn't have to be Shakespeare--just written. Pound it out. Commit yourselves. Books take work, right? I wasn't having so much fun when I was way behind, but now I am having a blast, and a lot of cool new ideas are coming to me.

This book's gonna rock. Eventually. When edited. By me.

Anyway, I just want to encourage you guys to at least write a little bit every day, just to keep a connection with your stories. And Brian and T.J.--if you've written more than you've noted in your word counts online, you should update those numbers. It'll be a little morale boost for you, to see those numbers climbing.

Anyway. Four Tet's "Rounds" CD is a fine instrumental electronica album for writing masterpieces to. I highly recommened it. Beautiful use of piano in there, too. And the drums. Oh, the drums.

Also, I just read a NaNoWriMo interview with a guy who did a 24-hour writing marathon with a bunch of people and got 10,000 words out of it, and though his word count suggests he gave up right after that, it might not be a bad idea for our group. We could get others involved too, from other ABQ forums, and you guys could get caught up. Let's talk about it.

Oh, and for the record: I can't believe this website has NO search features. Give me a break. Let's just make this as hard to use as possible, shall we? Phoenixwaller, care to defend them on that? You LIKE that there's no search functions? You LOVE it, I knew it!

Rock and roll despite; it's late.

Mike

The search feature has been disabled for the time being. It was considered resource intensive. It may be back, or not.

This link should lead to a thread on the tech site that discusses this:

http://www.nanowrimo.org/eng/node/1018851

Mike - we have a great forum called Site Feedback, you can rant all you want about slowness and lameness there. The Regional Forums are for folks talking about their novels, getting together and sharing tips.

All right, all right, I get it--calling attention to the site's undoubtedly preventable slowness or inaccessibilty is off limits anywhere but one particular forum that I can try to find sometime if I want to. Cool. Got it.

Thanks for policing our Tropes/English 423 forum, by the way; my three classmates really need protection from my opinions, so that's really cool of you. I'm sure they appreciate it as well.

ANYWAY--

T.J., that's terrific that you've gotten so much more written now. You are still totally in this, and I think that's great.

Is anyone from Tropes or 423 interested in getting together this weekend to dash out a few thousand words? Just let me know, 'cause I'd love to.

You addressed your post to "everyone" ... so I thought I'd let you know that we have a forum that the people who actually make the site read, so that your comments might actually go towards improving it. If we don't know what's bothering people, we might not prioritize things in the way that's most important to the users.

Hey,
So I am going to be working incredibly hard this weekend to catch up with the word count. Does anyone want to meet up sometime, perhaps Sunday afternoon? Let me know what you all are doing as far as your schedules go and we should figure something out.

James

James! Hey! I have been...chas-tized.

But I am a better person for it. No longer will mild sarcasm or misplaced complaints darken our literary conversations. No more! I am a changed man. I can't believe no one had ever pointed out to me until recently how rude I can be about unnecessary inconviences, and I don't know, what I can say, I feel...grateful. Yes, that's it, grateful.

It's really good to have that all behind me now.

And yeah, I'd love to meet up today maybe. I was hoping to hit the Frontier at 3 with Xiguli and the other UNM students, but my wife has been slow to get home today from her childsomethingorother class, and I've got two kids here. Two loud kids.

But maybe later this afternoon, for sure. 5ish? 7ish? Later? I've got about 5,000 words to catch up on, so that would be good for me.

Call or e-mail me, or post here. Cool.

NOTICE: JAMES AND MIKE WILL BE MEETING AT THE UNM-AREA DENNY'S TODAY, SUNDAY, FROM 5 P.M. UNTIL WE HAVE WRITTEN...A BUNCH.

ALL FELLOW NANOWRIMOIDS ARE ENCOURAGED TO ATTEND.

Dang, something has gone horribly awry. I tried to delete one of the duplicate posts that was flagged, but all the new posts seem to be gone.

I did not mean to delete anything more than that series of duplicates and there is no way for me to retrieve any of it.

If anyone can rebuild their conversation, I'd appreciate it.

wish granted! I love email alerts.

Posterity thanks you.

Yeah.

Lucky them.

Hello, tropes friends (and other unknown peoples.) With my surgery planned for the 3rd, I've been trying to finish all of my projects at work, get my house straightened up, well, you know, doing all of those pesky day to day things that are not writing a novel. I am actually off work from Thursday to Sunday and hope to catch up then. Looks like I'll have to average at least 3,500 words a day from now on to meet the 50K by the 30th.

Thanks Mike, for acting as team cheerleader! You are an inspiration.

XXTJ

No, thank YOU, TJ. I need more friends who can take weeks of my desperate attempts at complaining and then deftly repackage them as an inspirational season of "acting as team cheerleader."

Cool. And good luck with your surgery.

I'm still two full days behind the scheduled allotted word count, but I'm still writing 1,700 words a day so I won't get further behind than I am already. I think I can write an extra day in tomorrow, and then I'll make up another the day after. I really don't want the last days of November to be total insanity, as I have other stuff I have to write too, for school and for my column. (Ahem: Mystrangenewmexico.com.)

You guys, fellow classmates, I hope you are all writing--at least something, some amount of words. If you get in gear now, you can still pull this off by the end of November, but I really have to emphasize here that BOOKS DO NOT WRITE THEMSELVES. Seriously. Let's see those word counts move. If you're stuck on something, skip ahead, or go off on a tangent, or narrate a character's thoughts. (That's what I do when I'm really tired).

Remember, your books don't care if you're tired or busy or just don't feel like it. They don't care, because for as long as you allow yourselves to make excuses, your books don't even exist. As long as you allow yourself these days without writing, your books are just ideas in your heads, just ideas that no one else can even contemplate, because you haven't made sufficient effort to introduce them to people. And everyone has ideas. But we want drafts.

Stop procrastinating--unless, of course, your mind is on an upcoming surgery, then there's some leeway--and just get it written. We've already committed to this, and we're all going to kick ourselves if we don't follow through.

Be disciplined, be committed, and be tired. Neglect everything but your novels. Be writers! That's what writers do: they sacrifice work and sleep and health and fun, and they write. So come on. There are only nine days left, and there's almost nothing so important it can't wait nine little days. (I recently didn't check my e-mail for more than two months, and I didn't really miss anything.)

Just do this. If we need to get together for some writing marathons, we can do that. Just post about it here.

Hi James, et al, This is Dr. Jussawalla desperately trying to get caught up on my 50,000 words. Am at about 10,00 tonight. Would've gotten all my writing done except that I had to go a round recruit students to go to London with me! Hey you all at Tropes! Want to go to London with me? My novel is coming along and it is funny.-- more a novelized memoir-- But at least i"m getting in the habit of writing. Is this Jerry shea's calss assignment? Well lets see if i can go get a few more thousand words in before I turn in tonight. Looks like you all will beat your prof. at this! Feroza

Hey everyone: so, I'm just over ten thousand words behind my word count, thanks to the holidays and visiting friends and family.

If we were all on track, today, Day 24, writing the needed 1,667 words a day, every one of us would have already written 44,008 words, including today's.

So! I'm going to catch up, while I still have the weekend. Would anyone here like to join me in challenging ourselves to write 10,000 new words as fast as we possibly can? It's a nice round number, and almost all of us would benefit from it.

If anyone wants to do this with me, post here, and we can post our starting numbers and what number we will be at after adding 10,000 words. We could make it a race

What the heck, I was aiming for 10k between today and tomorrow anyway.

I would probably lose at any race as my typing skills are substandard at best, but I'll participate if you'll have me.

I'm right on track for today (at least according to my calculator) with a current word count of 40,917

if I can make it I'll top 50,000 by the end of the weekend and for this challenge would have 50,917.

You scared the hell outta me, Mike. I know I'm having trouble getting writing done, being down here in Clovis for Thanksgiving, but I couldn't fathom how I'd built up such a good cushion and was already behind!

But day 24 actually ends with a minimum of 40,008, NOT 44,008.

Is that another one of your supersneaky motivation techniques? Very clever, sir. Very clever.

Wow, I wish I was that smart. In truth, I'm just really bad at math. Only 40,008? That's fantastic. I'll get there tonight.

But the 10,000-word challenge is still on. And Phoenixwaller, if you're in, you are cool. That's awesome. I guess let's just use the honor system, and whoever says they have 10,000 new words first will win two million dollars in cash, to be paid in full by NaNoWriMo founder Chris Baty.

I am totally down for the 10k, which I am going to be doing everyday this week, so if anyone wants to join my challenge in getting 40,000 more words by the end of the month by all means join the "fun."