Intros and All That

Hi, I'm Lisa and this is my 4th time doing NaNo. I finished the past three years, completing four titles in the process. Three of these have been published or are contracted.

I have zero clue what I'm going to be writing this year, but I look forward to it greatly. It's great to have this "push" to focus on getting that word count done, no matter what. And I am all set for write-ins. Boy, I hope they do Wednesdays over at Stell's again...that was perfect.

Lisa
Writing in My Wildest Dreams at http://lisalogan.net

My name is Robert also, but for ease, call me Rob. I'm 28, unabashedly liberal and I love comics (but hate superheros). I tried nano in 07 and what came out of that is a comic being illustrated by Renzo Podesta, so I am hoping that this years nano will attract a publisher too.

I'll be writing about a man with schizophrenia who tries to break into the music industry. It'll be fun. Dark, but fun.

Hello, all. My name is Natasha, and I was lurking around here last year. Unfortunately, due to a hard drive meltdown right in the middle of November, I didn't make it to November 30th. However, I'm back to try again! I'm from Hesperia, a little town in the middle of a large desert in the middle of nowhere. LOL

Anyway, so I am going to try my best to make it to 50,000 words this year. We'll see how that goes considering I'm just about 7 months pregnant now as well as juggling school and my baby's daddy. Geeze, that sounds bad... What it means is I don't get to see him often so any time I can, writing pretty much gets set on the back burner.

“Forget all the rules. Forget about being published. Write for yourself and celebrate writing.”
–Melinda Haynes

Hi I'm John and I'm new to nanowrimo. I'm 20 years old and I live in Victorville (unfortunately). Not sure what I'm writing about yet but I'm sure I'll think of something. Good luck to you guys this year.

Hey great you are already ahead of me here. Let me formally welcome you all to the San Bernardino Region. This is our second year as our own group, previously were included in with Riverside County which made for a lot of work on the part of the ML.

I'm Tess and I'm the ML for this region. This is my third year with WriMo and second as an ML. I know the High Desert well and can coodinate events up here, but I am glad there are folks who are "down the hill" who keep things jumping with scheduling events - just make sure you let me know so I can get it on our Google Calendar, which I hope to have linked to our page very soon.

I'm looking forward to seeing "old friends" and meeting "newbies". It's going to be a great year!

Tess,
ML San Bernardino

Neither writer's cramp, nor power outages, nor writer's block, nor empty coffee pot will keep us from our appointed word count.

Never apologize for being from Victorville. I call it home also and I'd pick here over alot of other places in heart beat.

I do expect you to be at some of the write-ins up here. Last year we were at One of Lifes Perks (Apple Valley), Apple Valley Library and Hesperia Library.

Tess,
ML San Bernardino

Neither writer's cramp, nor power outages, nor writer's block, nor empty coffee pot will keep us from our appointed word count.

Hello there!

I'm Buster. My NaNo history is fairly short. I was a participant last year, but fell quite considerably short of the finish mark. Here's to hoping I make it this year! (College or no. Sleep? Who needs it? Not me, that's who.Exams? Who needs tho--er, okay. I do need those. Drat.) Anywho, I know I met a couple of you lovely folks last year, and I hope I can do so again this year. I'm not down in Victorville much anymore, but I'll try to come down for at least a few write-ins. I rather liked the whatsitsname coffee place. The loft is a neat little nook and a pleasant place to plop down and write.

Hope to be there!

Buster

Hey! I'm Jacquelyn, 25, and currently residing in Barstow. This will be my fifth NaNo, and I'm aiming for a fourth win. I have a general concept of what I will be writing this year. Knights. Though my knights are more like Navy SEALS or Green Berets then medieval knights...

Anyway, I hope to make one of the write ins this year. :)

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Another Rob here (there appears to be a surplus of us), this time from Arrowhead vicinity. I'm already working on a story that I started a short while ago, so I'm planning to use this NaNo as a kind of continuation exercise rather than to work up something new from scratch; 50,000 words towards it, rather than just a brand new 50k on something else...

"In the grim darkness of the far future, I still haven't finished my novel."

hello, i'm erika. this is my second time around this carousel, and im really grateful for all thirty days; i didn't discover NaNoWriMo until Nov. 7th last year and was on vacation for the last two weeks. i suspect a win is in order. i'm 20 and I live in victorville. this will probably be my last year in this region, so i hope to meet as many of you as possible at events.

i'm also going to give handwriting a shot, and not just because i broke my laptop screen and have to connect it to a clunky desktop monitor, i think i may be more productive that way. so i apologize in advance for all of the complaining i intend to do :]

good luck to all this year!

I know that we have several folks up in your area - maybe we can schedule a write-in up there. Find a place and time that works for you and let us know about it.

Tess,
ML San Bernardino

Neither writer's cramp, nor power outages, nor writer's block, nor empty coffee pot will keep us from our appointed word count.

Thanks Victorville-Tess for the email to find this forum.

Howdy to all the other posters. I live in Oak Hills and am looking forward to meeting some fellow local writers and participating this year. This is my first year; in fact, I just found out about this event earlier this year. It will be nice to have experienced folks to lean on a bit!

I read an article years ago about handwriting; there was a professional writer who reckoned that using a typewriter or hand-writing to create novels produced better work, because you knew each word written couldn't just be deleted or edited, so you gave it more thought. I liked the idea of it, but I'm a computer-user from the soles of my feet up, so I usually only use pen and paper to get my concepts and ideas straight; being able to doodle as well as write seems to be helpful for that.

Good luck with this approach!

"In the grim darkness of the far future, I still haven't finished my novel."

Hi, I am not sure I'll be able to meet up live. I retired my truck last year and getting up and down the mtn is a bit tough. I write for a living and hope to do something fun. Pondering what I might write and looking forward to it since the weather is super cold!

Find the Ark Lady at http://www.arkanimals.com or follow her on Twitter at http://twitter.com/arklady

Wow, only two people from up the hill so far.

I'm Firaa (not my real name but the one I go by for everything). 17, class of 2010 and proudly attending Rim of the World High. I'm in the Arrowhead area as well.

First year Nano'ing, and while last month I was bouncing off the walls for waiting, now the jitters are starting to creep in. I'm sure having people who actually live in the same area as me will let me feel a bit comforted though. I look forward to chatting with you all. =]

Maybe you two can meet up there somewhere? Or carpool?

Write in's are SO MUCH FUN and it's a good chance to meet everybody and talk books. Maybe it's because most of my friends don't read, but talking books makes me happy.

Welcome back! Hope your first semester at college is going well.

Neither writer's cramp, nor power outages, nor writer's block, nor empty coffee pot will keep us from our appointed word count.

Class of 2010. Doesn't THAT make me feel old...

I'm stubbornly anti-social when it comes to these write-ins; not just because I'm anti-social (though that may be part of it), but because, in all honesty, I've never been able to do my best writing in environments like a restaurant, coffee-shop or...well, anywhere except home, really. I'm just too easily distracted. I know some people can just pick up and write whenever; I can scribble ideas, think, plan and plot like that, and used to do some of my best plot-thinking while I was out at lunch or taking a coffee-break at work, but when it comes to actually doing the writing, I just seem to need a proper desk in my home environment.

"In the grim darkness of the far future, I still haven't finished my novel."

I'm Nancy, and this is my first attempt at NaNo. I'm getting ready to start a new book, so I thought this might be a fun way to push the writing. I live in Apple Valley. I'm so excited to see all the writers here. Woo. Hoo. Since the coffee shop stays open until 10pm, I'll try to come for a while on Thursday nights. Mondays might be better.

I'm not much for writing in public either - people always seem to want my attention just when things are getting good. So I'm a bit glad I won't be letting you down by not wanting to do a write-in, Rob. =]
Now that I've planned a bit more through my plotline, I'm not nearly as nervous about this next month.

Hello!

I'm Katheryn and this is my first NaNo. I live in West Covina, which is (of course) in LA County: Los Angeles is my primary region. However, I have put down San Bernardino as my secondary region, since a lot of the people on the LA forum live in the Westside or the San Fernando Valley or the South Bay. I plan to attend some of the Pomona Valley events, as long as I have transportation and my computer is rid of viruses before November 1 (I'm borrowing my brother's computer right now).

I'm planning a historical novel (with some literary pretensions, since it is very character-based) on the marriage of Charles Boyer and Pat Paterson: happy Hollywood marriage turns tragic after son kills himself.

you guys should consider going to at least one write in. They are easier to write in than you might think.Because we're all working towards a goal, when its time to sit down and write, we do it. You might get someone asking "crap, how long is the golden gate bridge?" or some equally random question but mostly you just hear click clack's of keyboards getting pressed.

When I did this two years ago, we'd spend a bit of time talking, asking how each others novels are doing and talking books and then go into work mode where we essentially desocialized and got to work.

Oh, I absolutely agree. In fact, I did some of my best and largest chunks of last year's NaNo at write-ins. It's not distracting at all really, because when the time comes to shut down and write, everyone does it. Once in a while someone comes up for air and there will be a bit of stretching and questioning and refilling of coffees, but everyone's there to write, so they all get back to it pretty quickly. It's rather encouraging to be with a group of people doing the same nutty thing you are.

I guess that's the thing for me, though; what mobile tech and writing kit I have isn't as effective for me as my main desktop, where I can sit back, pile books around me if I need to, grab my scribbled notebooks all to hand, get at my little reference bookshelf if I need to research something specific that I know is there, and so on.

It's not that I'd expect to be distracted constantly (though as I say, I'm very easily distracted); although I do remember a proposal to write in Chuck E. Cheese one year, which sounds like it might have been difficult. But when I've tried to write away from my desk before - in all kinds of different situations - it's invariably been a failure. The most words I ever remember getting down was around two hundred, where at my desk, I'd regularly expect to put down a thousand on a poor day, and up to ten on a decent one. I even had the same problem with writing in the wrong place in my own home; environment seems to be very important to how successful I am when I sit down to write.

(That said, though...I am curious to meet up with a few other writers from the area, so maybe it'd be an idea to just get myself written ahead of the mark, so that a weak day wouldn't matter so much...)

"In the grim darkness of the far future, I still haven't finished my novel."

Hi everyone!

'M Alex, Sasia, and Comma-Kaze; this is my second year of NaNo. I won last year with my novel "Recipe for a Serial Killer", and this year I plan to win again with a metafiction piece. It's lots of fun; I have a feeling that I won't be getting bored with it, especially since the style/tone/format completely changes every chapter.

Lesse; I'm a junior in HS, I live in Hesperia (half the time), and I'm in band. That's pretty much me in a nutshell!

I'm definitely looking forward to meeting up with you all again; has anyone heard if we're going to have access to the Hesperia library again this year?

In the land of Literaturia, everything can happen....

Hi, all. I'm claiming dual (duel?) citizenship between Sack-a-tomatoes and 2-Niner (OK, Sacramento and Twentynine Palms, although that really should be Wonder Valley because I'm just outside the city limits and one block from the water main, although my neighbor to the Northeast says we might be able to get it extended, but I don't really live there yet because I'm not retired yet, but I do pay taxes to San Berdoo County so I figure that kind of counts, and I do use my 2.5 acres as a $15K campsite now and then, but in the winter when I come down to visit I stay at the Inn and drink Manhattans.) When in Sacramento, I go hiking and camping and exploring, and paint watercolor landscapes, and hang out with my historical society buddies. Female, mostly Irish, 49.75 -- hitting the big 5-0 in December, day job is desk grunt for govmint, single, no kids, two fish. Recently reenlisted as Catholic. Working on a horror novel, I guess. Maybe Flannery O' Connor meets Shirley Jackson for tea? Booyah, y'all.

Welcome back! Good to see you again, and I hope we run into you at a write in this year. Also, your synopsis cracked me up big time. :P

@kbrigan: Your introduction made me laugh! It brought levity to a rather hectic day at the office full of meetings, deadlines, and other hair-pulling frustrations. :)

Best wishes with your horror novel!

~Jacquelyn

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Hi, my name is Lisa. I'm in Yucaipa. I've been thinking about attempting NaNoWriMo for a couple of years and have finally got up the nerve to give it a shot. Not really sure what I'll be writing yet. I've got three ideas I'm considering, but nothing is finalized. Hope to attend a write-in or two during the month. They seem like fun, if perhaps a bit challenging. (I usually prefer complete quiet while I write.) The NaNoWriMo should be an interesting experience and I look forward to sharing it with all of you.

"You will do foolish things, but do them with enthusiasm." - Colette

Hi lisa! Welcome to the party!