Europe :: England :: Birmingham-West Midlands

Taking on the world

artman-opensphere — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 20:03:08 +0000

Yay guys, we're 30th in the charts out of 484 listed places worldwide :o)

We rock.

Most importantly the Manchy arch rivals are 61 places behind us in 91st he he. We love you really!

We are beating amongst others:
All of France
Manchester
San Francisco
York and Leeds
Wales
Newcastle
Edinburgh
Glasgow
Japan
Did I mention Manchester

Germany and Austria only have 3 times us and London only twice :o)

C'mon let's go all out for the top ten :o)
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Europe :: England :: Birmingham-West Midlands

A word count graph for Birmingham-West Midlands

NewMexicoKid — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 16:36:34 +0000

Hello! My name is Tim aka NewMexicoKid, one of three co-Municipal Liaisons for the United States::Illinois::Naperville region. In honor of your fine MLs, I'd like to offer you a friendly word count graph (click through the image to be taken to a page with more details).

Instructions
Please reply to this post if you want to be included in the graph. The scanposts tool automatically updates the graphs about once an hour, so be patient in waiting to be added.

As an extra fun point, please include the last (family-friendly!) dramatic paragraph from your novel-in-progress.

Enjoy!

--Tim

P.S. Note: it will take about an hour after my initial posting for the graph to appear above, so if you don't see one up there, don't worry. :-)
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Tim Yao aka NewMexicoKid
co-ML, Illinois::Naperville
Fog Readability Analysis
Writing resources

Europe :: England :: Birmingham-West Midlands

Rewrites

David Wake — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 11:45:39 +0000

Having passed the finish line, and yesterday writing "The End", I'm now struggling to fill the large holes I left behind in the rush to complete.

I don't want to distract anyone from 'the write', but anyone interested in getting together for "the rewrite"?

I'm thinking of a group that meets reasonably regularly, say once a month or whatever the consensus suggsts, to aid, persuade and critique for each other.

Cheers,

David.
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Cheers,
David.

Europe :: England :: Birmingham-West Midlands

Word War Info - Updated 21 Nov.

Loriba — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 14:22:52 +0000

Hi all,

This thread is primarily for me to post info about the Word War to all competitors, so it's being cross-posted to all the regions taking part. If you want to make any comments, however, feel free. :-)

ETA: Here's the link to the leader board: http://www.annelyle.com/projects/scoreboard.html

The regions currently signed up are:

Birmingham
Brighton
Cambridge
Darlington
Devon & Cornwall
Essex
Gloustershire
Lancaster & Cumbria
Leicester
London
Manchester
Newcastle
Norfolk
Oxfordshire
York & Leeds
Dublin
Edinburgh
Glasgow
Eng: Elsewhere
Scot: Elsewhere
Wales

Only one region has given a definite No, so we may get a lot more before the 10th. Here's hoping. :-)

All those regions that are signed up should have a Banter thread, so feel free to go over and give them hell (but in a nice way). :-)

There may be a slight delay in the War starting up, as we're reliant on the site API working and the site is notoriously slow during the first few days of Nano, plus we're running it in a slightly different way this year and I'm not sure what problems will crop up because of that. In addition, one of Anne's cats is very seriously ill at the moment, so she may not have time to work on it. I'll be in touch with her and will let all the relevant MLs know if we have to make other arrangements at all. I'll also be in touch when I know the URL of the leader board. :-)

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Lottie
I'll sleep when I'm dead.

Europe :: England :: Birmingham-West Midlands

50k! Woot!

ZoranaLewis — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 13:26:46 +0000

There's a few of us hit 50k so far, and I know our ML's are coming uber close so I figured I'd put this up to say well done to us!

And to those not quite there, don't stop typing!!
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Europe :: England :: Birmingham-West Midlands

light-hearted banter: Naperville vs. Birmingham-West Midlands

NewMexicoKid — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 05:09:42 +0000

Seeing that (as of November 14-15), Naperville has clawed its way into a lead, at least for the moment, I thought it might be an appropriate time to post a light-hearted (and, at the core, fairly civil :-) ) banter thread for our respective regions to help motivate each other (and themselves ;-) ). This thread is being published in both regions.

Tell me the truth, our resurgence makes this a more interesting regional word war, doesn't it? And maybe you won't have to work so hard at putting together a regional song this year :-) ;-) ;-)

--Tim
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Tim Yao aka NewMexicoKid
co-ML, Illinois::Naperville
Fog Readability Analysis
Writing resources

USA :: Illinois :: Naperville

Coventry Area Nanoers

alienatedduck — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 09:08:58 +0000

Coventry always gets a bit over shadowed by Birmingham seeing as we're so close so I though I'd post to tempt fellow Coventry people out of the woodwork. Maybe you've lived here all your life? Or maybe you study at one of the two universities? Or maybe you live nearby in places such as Leamington Spa or Kenilworth (or other places near by that my knowledge of geography doesn't cover!)

If there's enough interest we could maybe do our own meet up at some point? Or at least we can chat about our Nanos and the wonder of Coventry.

Anyway I'm Gary and currently live in Canley. I know, not the most glamourous place. I lived in Earlsdon last year, and Leamington the year before. I won't do a whole big into as there's a general thread for that, but I though I'd get a Coventry board up to say hi.
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2008: A Turtle, And Other Things That Destroyed The World - Rewriting on hold for November
2009: The Floating City - Going a little too well!

Europe :: England :: Birmingham-West Midlands

Fourth Write-In - 21st November

Duochanfan — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 11:33:30 +0000

Hi all

Hope your writing is going great, don't forget to update your word counts!

Well, the fourth write in will be held at the coffee lounge again at 12 noon. We'll be down in the basement area for those that haven't come before.

Also Lily and I will be doing breakfast at the Victorian Resturant again, for any that want to join us, well be there between 10am and 10:30am waiting outside the coffee lounge, for anyone who wants to join us.

Sue and Lily

PS. sorry for being late with this post, life has been hard for me the last five days. sue
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Love is Love, who are we to judge if it is right or wrong.
The Burning Quills
2007 - WIN - Death's Messenger: The Journey Starts
2008 - WIN - Death's Messenger: The Journey Continues
2009 - WSS - Kaspia War Trilogy

Europe :: England :: Birmingham-West Midlands

Extra write-ins, anyone? On Sundays?

snuffyssuicide — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 19:35:50 +0000

I won't be able to make this Saturday's write-in, but I should be able to make the two weeks after that. My partner just set a date for when she's flying out (20th) which means after that I'll be writing like a crazy thing. Does anyone want to join me to write on those last two Sundays as well? (22nd and 29th)
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Alison/snuffy

Europe :: England :: Birmingham-West Midlands

Nanoers/Wrimos from Stroud to Swindon?

Sukai — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 19:00:19 +0000

How many other NaNoers/WriMos live in the Stroud area or near Swindon? I live in Cirencester, which isn't the most eventful place (I only found out about NaNoWriMo a couple of days ago on the internet, and nobody breathed a word about it to me beforehand..)

It'd be great to know how many other people live near me ^.^
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Europe :: England :: Birmingham-West Midlands

Anyone Under Quota?

RobReynolds2303 — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 10:01:00 +0000

I sure am.

It's a combination of my netbook not doing what it's meant to do (Autosave = Lie), having very small amounts of time at home, and, yes, maybe a tiny bit of apathy this year.

I suppose it's also easy to get distracted by the spectacular word counts some people are pumping out, but even so the majority of people are aiming for the 50k mark, so I'm guessing I'm not the only one in this position.

But I'm determined to get back on track. I'm trying not to think of it as a 700-odd word defecit, cos then I'd only panic about having to write 2350 words or something to get back on track. I'm just going to think of it as a target of 1800 words a day; this is just 150 more than normal, but in six days the margin will have closed to less than a hundred under par, which hopefully will be easily vanquished.

Anyone else in a similar boat at the moment care to share their tactics for hitting 50k? It's only Day Four, and it's too early to say die just yet! =)
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Europe :: England :: Birmingham-West Midlands

Missing week.

digitalruin — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 13:28:10 +0000

I have spent the whole of last week filling up the new Home Bargains in Stourbridge. When I raised my pen it sank again, miserably. I've done nothing this week. Seriously nothing. Now when I pick my story back up my mind groans at me.

Have any of you any tips or tricks or anything? Writing nothing for a week has taken all the wind out of me.
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Europe :: England :: Birmingham-West Midlands

Anyone else had that 'this wasn't supposed to happen, but it's kind of cool' moment?

Aiwevanya — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 18:24:44 +0000

So I have a character in my book that's a eunuch, there's a complicated reason as to why this happened to him within the story, but my chief motivation for creating him in the first place was as a foil to my other main male character who's... kind of the bastard offspring of Captain Jack Harkness and Lord Byron, with maybe some of the more entertaining Borgias thrown in for good measure... anyway the point is he had to go to a funeral vault to examine some bones (the eunuch that is) and when he got there an overly chatty young lady with bright pink hair wrote herself into the story as a mortician that could be relied upon to carry his half of the conversation, now I think he's falling in love with her... which can only end tragically all things considered... and this girl didn't even exist until five seconds before she said 'hi there, and started going on about how people aren't really interesting until they're dead...

So... anyone else had something like that happen? okay, possibly not very like that, but cool stuff that wasn't supposed to happen, happening to the least likely character for it to happen to... if you see what I mean.
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Europe :: England :: Birmingham-West Midlands

Introduce yourself!!

Cieria — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 12:23:53 +0000

Hey!! It's another year of WriMo Madness! Yay!

So this is just a little post to get to know each other.

I'm Lily I'm one of your MLs. The other is Duochan who'll post in a bit. I live in Malvern and get the train into Birmingham quite a bit. :P But if anyone wants some write-ins organized in Malvern, in addition to the weekly Birmingham ones then just drop me a PM and we can sort it out. :)

So a bit about me. I'm 18 years old and doing my third year of college. And this will be my 5th NaNo!

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Europe :: England :: Birmingham-West Midlands

ChartJackers!

Joshington — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 07:36:07 +0000

Hi,
I know this isn't NaNoWriMo-related but I thought it would make sense to spread it as much as I can!
ChartJackers is a project started by four UK YouTubers (Charlie McDonnell, Alex Day, Johnny Durham, some guy called jimmy) and they got people on the internet to contribute in "hijacking the charts" and getting their charity song to number one. Their song is called "I've Got Nothing" and all the money goes to Children in Need, it's only available on iTunes (search for "ChartJackers" i think or "I've got nothing" otherwise I'll try and find a link to it somewhere) so please if you can buy it because it's only 69p but all those 69ps added up with make a significant contribution to a good charity.
Thanks a billion if you do buy the song,
Yours in WriMo-ing,
Joshington

PS: ChartJackers' YouTube page- http://youtube.com/ChartJackersProject
And the music video is here- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hYDRWXjJlB4

PPS: I just found a link- http://itunes.apple.com/album/ive-got-nothing/id336614737
You'll need to press "View in iTunes" if it doesn't open iTunes automatically I think!
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Europe :: England :: Birmingham-West Midlands

Third Write In - 14th November

Duochanfan — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 19:59:53 +0000

Hi all

Hows everyone doing with their novels? Good I hope.

Well, On Saturday 14th we will be having our third write in. It will once again be in the coffee lounge from 12 noon. Hope to see many of you there again. We have had a wonderful turn out so far this year.

Lily and I will be doing breakfast at the Victorian Resturant as normal, We will be waiting outside of the Coffee Lounge from 10am to 10:30am for anyone that wants to join us.

Hope to see many of you there!

Sue and Lily
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Love is Love, who are we to judge if it is right or wrong.
The Burning Quills
2007 - WIN - Death's Messenger: The Journey Starts
2008 - WIN - Death's Messenger: The Journey Continues
2009 - WSS - Kaspia War Trilogy

Europe :: England :: Birmingham-West Midlands

Suggestion thread for regional anthem

Cieria — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 15:13:00 +0000

So we're going to need a regional song for Naperville to sing when we kick their butts in this word war. So shall we have suggestions?

I assume that we'll include The Burning Quills at somepoint as well as Mops and Lemurs. So anything else?
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Europe :: England :: Birmingham-West Midlands

Word War Banter

Duochanfan — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 12:25:13 +0000

Well, for anyone who wants to talk, here ya go, go nutty, lols

sue
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Love is Love, who are we to judge if it is right or wrong.
The Burning Quills
2007 - WIN - Death's Messenger: The Journey Starts
2008 - WIN - Death's Messenger: The Journey Continues
2009 - WSS - Kaspia War Trilogy

Europe :: England :: Birmingham-West Midlands

ML Appreciation Day!

Magpie Moth — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 22:33:20 +0000

Thanks to Cieria and Duochanfan for organising such an excellent and inspirational Write-in yesterday!

My nice new NaNoWriMo sticker is now proudly decorating my laptop, and I am using my stickers to track my progress in the booklet.

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Europe :: England :: Birmingham-West Midlands

Online Chat Room

Cieria — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 16:33:09 +0000

We now have an online, IRC, chat room for the region.

Just go to: http://england.chatnano.net/Birmingham/index.html

Click the "Chat Now" link.

Put in a name

And start chatting!!

I'm going to try and have it open whenever I'm at the computer, but what I've found with these things is if no one's on then just keep the chat box open whilst you do other things and someone will turn up. If you close the window and check back occasionally then we're all more likely to miss one another.

There will also be set times when Sue or I will be holding word wars or just general gatherings in the chat room, these will be announced nearer the time.

Happy Chatting :)

Lily and Sue xx
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Europe :: England :: Birmingham-West Midlands

I am NOT giving up

Germain.baxter — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 11:19:03 +0000

Well, I am way behind on my word count but the good news is that my spreadsheet tells me that I only need 2165.7 (?) words per day to finish and is totally achievable.

Mitigating circumstances...
I had to go to Liverpool for the day and I took the train so I thought Great! 2 hours each way with nothing to do.
I reserved a seat with a plug socket but when I got on the train THERE WERE NO SOCKETS!
I was gutted cos I had been relying on that to get me up to speed.

So...
Anyone else not quite giving up?
Any other mitigating circumstances?

N.B.
A big thanks to those who achieve big word counts in one day, sometimes more than my total.
If you can do that how can I give up when I only need 2165.7 a day?
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.............................................................
Nano 2005 - Won - Crashed
Nano 2006 - Won - Drama in Skitham
Nano 2007 - Lost - No title :(
Nano 2008 - Won - The Train Journey

Europe :: England :: Birmingham-West Midlands

Worcester/ Malvern Write-ins

Cieria — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 20:49:29 +0000

Hey all!

So every year we get people asking whether write-ins can be held in Malvern/ Worcester in addition to the main ones in Birmingham.

And so since you have an ML who is located in Malvern this year, I have made it my own personal mission to get things organised.

So I have found a couple of places that will allow us to host our events. All in Worcester City Centre.

First up is the Glasshouse:
It's up near the commandary but I can give directions to anyone who doesn't know the way (or meet somewhere else and take you there.). They've said that they'll reserve a table for us. But they have said that they're not that happy with us going there in the evening. So unless we find a weekday afternoon that we can all do then that may not be an option.

Secondly is the Library:
I haven't confirmed this but I went in and got the email address of the person to speak to. So if we decide that this is a viable option then I'll email them and get this all sorted out.

Thirdly, Laebrye has informed me that Charlston's in Reindeer court will take us. I'll have to go in there and make sure but that could also be an option.

Lastly is a last resort option. We may need to use someone's house. I'm happy for mine to be used, but maybe not every time. So if you are happy to host write-ins in your house (and don't live somewhere obscure that no one will be able to find.) then drop me a PM and let me know. We've already had two people offer up their houses (I'm naming no names but one of them is me. :P).

Any other ideas then please either reply to this thread or PM me.

Thankyou
Lily

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Europe :: England :: Birmingham-West Midlands

A Regional Challenge from Naperville to Birmingham-West Midlands

FinbarrMcG — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 05:40:54 +0000

Hey there, you lemur loving loyalists!

The region of Naperville (United States:: Illinois::Naperville)
hereby challenges you to a Regional Word War with the following terms:
1) Winner to be defined as the region with the greatest average word count for all active*, non-ringer **
members who are homed to the region, taken at the end of November in each region
2) The losing region is to provide a recording of themselves singing the anthem of the winning region

You can expect to be mopped up, as we have done with Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal, and France in prior years.

What say ye?

Issued by Finbarr McG,
on behalf of the Naperville Nanowrimo Region

* definition of active to be worked out by mutual consent, and subject to available tool support.
The goal would be to define a member as active if
they have reached 50,000 words or have updated their
word count statistics in the last 10 November days.

** non-ringer would include those members who were active and homed to the region prior to November 16th.
Also subject to available tool support, as noted in (*) above.

All rights reserved. Offer void where prohibited. Some conditions may apply.
Viewers don't try this at home. Store in cool dry place. Your mileage may differ.
Subject to change without notice. Past performance provides no indication of future results.
Smoking kills. Subject to change without notice.
May have been processed using equipment used with tree nuts.
Batteries not included.
Disclaimer does not cover misuse, accident, lightning, flood, tornado, tsunami, volcanic eruption, earthquake,
hurricanes and other Acts of God, neglect, damage from improper reading, incorrect line voltage, improper or
unauthorized reading, broken antenna or marred cabinet, missing or altered serial numbers, electromagnetic
radiation from nuclear blasts, sonic boom vibrations, customer adjustments that are not covered in this list, and
incidents owing to an airplane crash, ship sinking or taking on water, motor vehicle crashing, dropping the item,
falling rocks, leaky roof, broken glass, mud slides, forest fire, or projectile (which can include, but not be
limited to, arrows, bullets, shot, BB's, shrapnel, lasers, napalm, torpedoes, or emissions of X-rays, Alpha, Beta
and Gamma rays, knives, stones, etc.).
Mahalo.

All litigation costs incurred in enforcement of this document are to be borne
by the legal and legitimate legates of the lawyers and their leprous lemon-loving lemurs.

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Europe :: England :: Birmingham-West Midlands

Second Write in - 7th November

Duochanfan — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 17:16:31 +0000

Hi all

We had such a great turn out for the Kick Off and first write in, it was brilliant to see so many new and old faces. I hope we will see you all again on Saturday 7th November, at the Coffee Lounge in the Basement. It will start at 12 noon once again

On another note, Lily and I will be meeting at the Coffee Lounge between 10 and 10:30am for breakfast at the Victorian Resturant, their full english breakfast is £5.50 you can have veggie if you wish as well. Or anything else, lols.

Second Write In - Coffee Lounge - 12 Noon

For early breakfast - meet outside Coffee Lounge - 10am to 10:30am

We hope to see you at the Write in

And well done all of you so far our total word count is soaring :D go pat yourselves on the back.

Sue and Lily.
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Love is Love, who are we to judge if it is right or wrong.
The Burning Quills
2007 - WIN - Death's Messenger: The Journey Starts
2008 - WIN - Death's Messenger: The Journey Continues
2009 - WSS - Kaspia War Trilogy

Europe :: England :: Birmingham-West Midlands

Seriously, how can I write at my PC, when I can watch videos of Pugs dressed as Yoda on it?

digitalruin — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 11:07:52 +0000

Seriously.
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