[STICKY] REGIONAL EMAILS (copies of all emails sent out to Essex participants)

We’re almost there and the adrenaline and excitement are flaring. Some of you can’t wait; some of you may be currently gripped by fear. Questions are flying around you head like a swarm of wasps: Will I make it to 50k? When will I find time to write? What possessed me to tell the people I work with what I am doing in November?

Don’t worry. Myself, and other NaNo veterans, are here with the can of bug spray. BE GONE FOUL INSECTS!

--You will hit 50,000 words because you want to, and because you have others around you who will nag you.

--You will find the time between all the other things you have to do. Woken up? Time to write. Kids at school? Time to write? Five minutes before your significant other arrives home? How many words can you write in that time?

--You told everyone at work or school? Great! Now tell everyone else you know! There’s nothing like a bit of peer pressure and expectation, or a few healthy jibes, to get your fingers dancing over the keyboard. If you know that everyone is going to say ‘I told you so’ when you fail, you are much more likely to succeed.

It’s time to make your final plans, if you’re one of those people who plans their writing, and buy in the mountains of snacks and coffee.
I’m sure you still have questions, even if you’ve done this before, but hopefully they are now beautiful butterflies fluttering harmlessly by. Send them my way and let’s get this adventure started!

There will be plenty of tips and tricks coming your way in the next month. If you have any tips of your own please send them my way so I can share them, or pay a visit to the Essex forum: http://www.nanowrimo.org/eng/node/1011639

Don’t forget to check our online calendar of events (at the top of the forum). Tonight we have our first online meet-up from about 10pm at http://www.chatzy.com/184439498392 (no software or install needed), so I’ll see you there!

Write on!
Tekiegirl
Essex ML

Essex forum: http://www.nanowrimo.org/eng/node/1011639
Our chat-room for online meet-ups: http://www.chatzy.com/184439498392
NaNoWriMo official site: http://www.nanowrimo.org

NaNoWriMo 2009 Untitled:
NaNoWriMo 2008 Chosen: 66354 WON

Ok, so we’re at the start of the road to a place called NaNoNovelist City. On this road you will meet many diverse people, but they are all people with the same goal: to write a novel!

Some like to make this journey alone, but when you pass through Insaneville and Caffeine Creek, you may want someone to pull you out the other side and set you back on the right road. These fellow travellers are the only guides you have, except for the word-count signposts, which pepper the roadside.

Do not despair! Many of your fellow travellers are raking up their frequent flyer miles and have made the pilgrimage before. They are the ones with the maps, but you should know that every map is different. There is no correct map and you will be creating your own as you travel. These maps will show the way through plot minefields, road (or writer’s) blocks, swamps of despair, and the various pitfalls and traps that we will all encounter.
So if you meet a lost soul on your journey, give them a peek of your map. You never know when you might need to ask someone else for directions.

Write on!
Tekiegirl
Essex ML

Next scheduled online meet-up: 1st Nov, 7pm onwards.
Remember to check the calendar at the top of the forums for more events.

Essex forum: http://www.nanowrimo.org/eng/node/1011639
Our chat-room for online meet-ups: http://www.chatzy.com/184439498392
NaNoWriMo official site: http://www.nanowrimo.org

NaNoWriMo 2009 Untitled:
NaNoWriMo 2008 Chosen: 66354 WON

Right, it’s day 8 (or whenever the NaNo servers manage to churn out this email to you all) and the pages are mounting up.
Did you know it was Back Up Your Novel Day on 4th November? Did you do it? Did you back it up?

If not you’d better do it now. How? You can email it to yourself, use online storage, copy it to a USB drive, burn it to a CD or DVD, or even print it out! Just get a copy somewhere other than your computer hard drive; otherwise you’re leaving your entire word-count in one basket. If your computer dies at day 29 you will be most displeased (I'm not exaggerating there).
Personally I backup my novel after every writing session. I have an external hard drive, so I simply right-click on my file and choose Send to... External Drive (G:) or whatever it may be. It’s a handy and quick way to back up, and you can do it with any removable storage, like a USB drive.

UK Word War Update (Imagine some dramatic music here).
As of lunchtime on 6th November (when I wrote this to add to the server queue) we are in second place. GO ESSEX! If you would like to sign up to become part of the team, you need to leave a message on this thread (by the morning of 10th at the latest): http://www.nanowrimo.org/eng/node/3335604
If you would like to check on how Essex is doing now, you can do so here: http://www.annelyle.com/projects/scoreboard.html

My third and last tip today is to check your time zone is set correctly. When Chris told me to do this in the pre NaNo emails I thought “It was set right for 2008, it will surely still be correct.” Oh no it wasn’t! My time-zone was inexplicably set to BST (GMT +1). If that is the case and you go to verify your novel at 11pm on 30th November the site will think it is already 1st December. NOOO!
Go check it now. Go to your profile and click on User Settings on the left. You’ll find the time-zone near the bottom.

For my next email I am going to send you a list of tips and tricks, so if you have any you want me to include then you can send them to me by replying to this email or via a Private Message on the site.
I will also send you all an email about our planned mid-month meet-up in Chelmsford. We’re finalising the details over the next few days.

For now, keep going, try to keep ahead of the dreaded daily target, as once you fall behind it’s hard to catch up again.

Write on!
Tekiegirl
Essex ML

Remember to check the calendar at the top of the forums for more events.

Essex forum: http://www.nanowrimo.org/eng/node/1011639
Our chat-room for online meet-ups: http://www.chatzy.com/184439498392
NaNoWriMo official site: http://www.nanowrimo.org

NaNoWriMo 2009 Untitled:
NaNoWriMo 2008 Chosen: 66354 WON

Two things this email.

1. I promised to email you all the details of our Mid-Month Meet-Up and here they are:
Venue: Caffe Nero, 96 High St, Chelmsford, Essex CM1 1EF.
Date: Sunday 15th November 2009
Time: 9am-5pm (while the coffee shop is open).
Pop in any time or stay all day. There should be plenty of time for you to get home in time for Doctor Who :)
For those of you who have never attended a meet-up or write-in, it’s a chance to meet like-minded people who are in the same literary boat. We chat, swap tips, and ultimately write! There will be word-wars for you to join in, e.g. who can write the most words in 10 minutes, or who can beat their word-count from the last 10 minutes. It’s a great way to bolster your word-count as everyone is friendly and encouraging. And if that doesn’t temp you I have FREE NaNoWriMo stickers for everyone who attends. These include one exclusive to meet-ups and write-ins that you can not get anywhere else! I should have enough for one exclusive and one other design of your choice each!
You don’t even need a laptop, just a good old-fashioned pen and paper. See you there!

2. I am declaring Saturday 7th November Official Essex Catch-up and Get-Ahead Day!
If you are behind then this is the day when you will catch-up and then exceed your word-count. If you’re on target then use today to get well ahead of target and give you a nice soft wordie cushion to fall onto later in the month when disaster hits and you just can’t find the time to write.
Today not a good day? Working? Looking after the kids? Then choose your own Official Catch-Up and Get-Ahead Day, and stick to it. Maybe it’s tomorrow, maybe Tuesday, but stick to it and you will meet your target.
By the end of day 9 we should all be aiming for 15,000 words. Let’s all do that and the big 50k is in sight!

Write on!
Tekiegirl
Essex ML

P.S. There’s still time to sign up for the UK Essex Word War team on this thread: http://www.nanowrimo.org/eng/node/3335604. It’s a great motivator to know that your team are counting on you!

Remember to check the calendar at the top of the forums for more events.

Essex forum: http://www.nanowrimo.org/eng/node/1011639
Our chat-room for online meet-ups: http://www.chatzy.com/184439498392
NaNoWriMo official site: http://www.nanowrimo.org

NaNoWriMo 2009 Untitled:
NaNoWriMo 2008 Chosen: 66354 WON

We’re now approaching the halfway point. Don’t focus on the 50,000 words just yet. For now we are thinking about the 25k.
It’s like a trek up a mountain. (No really, it is.) People climbing mountains don’t start on the flat ground and head straight for the top. They head for base camp first; this was our first goal.

We’re way past base camp now, but we’re still not aiming for the top. We’re going to have to pitch several camps on the way up. So today we are heading for our next campsite, and that happens to be at 25,000 feet (See I told you it was like climbing a mountain!).

Think of your 25k goal as the plateau at 25,000 feet. We can’t set up camp on the steep slope leading up to the plateau. Pitching a tent on the side of a mountain is hard enough without the threat of rolling out of the tent in the middle of the night. We’re going to hit 25k by the end of day 15, even if we have to pitch our tent in the early hours of day 16 (with the help of a torch).

Some of you may be finding the climb to 25k a little slow. Stop re-reading what you have written and learn a lesson from Joseph Grand. This man (a fictional character in The Plague by Albert Camus) was writing a novel, just like us. But he never got past the first sentence! He kept rewriting it, trying to find the perfect opening to his story.
The perfectionist in him could not stand to carry on until he felt the first line was the best it could be. Now, we are all way past our first lines. Do you think your first line will survive the editing process? Can you even remember what it was? Don’t go back and read it!

Your Inner Editor is your number one enemy this month. I personally have sent mine to Chris Baty’s Inner Editor kennel, where it is very happy nit-picking with the other inner editors boarding there. If yours is still with you then I can highly recommend the place. It’s free too.

Send it now. Wave good-bye, and get down to hitting your 25k.
I’ll see you when you get there. (Mine’s the sunflower-yellow tent).

Ooh, and remember it’s our Mid-Month Meet-Up on Sunday 15th. All the details are on the Essex NaNoWriMo calendar here: http://www.google.com/calendar/render?cid=pmn0vtl50lqk7fg0is5rb3lp6k%40g...

Write on!
Tekiegirl
Essex ML

Remember to check the calendar at the top of the forums for more events.

Essex forum: http://www.nanowrimo.org/eng/node/1011639
Our chat-room for online meet-ups: http://www.chatzy.com/184439498392
NaNoWriMo official site: http://www.nanowrimo.org

NaNoWriMo 2009 Untitled:
NaNoWriMo 2008 Chosen: 66354 WON

Nearly three weeks in and two solid weekends left. Don’t let yourself get distracted by X-Factor and Strictly, and if you have to watch then plan some uninterrupted writing time around your precious TV time! And remember, X-Factor has loads of advert breaks to write in. What? You watch those adverts?

At the end of this weekend we should all be at 36,667 words and be heading for the home straight. Let’s grab on tenuously to that analogy.

Week one saw us all gallop off at high speed. We weren’t thinking much about the finish line, but looking forward to the first hedge in the distance, which represented that first major hurdle: 10k. In week two we jumped the 15k fence with ease and cantered on toward week three.
The first day of week three saw our first water jump. Some of us may have got a little wet at 25k, but we pulled ourselves out of the mire, gently scolded our keyboard horses, and remounted.

This week three has seen us jump the grand 30k fence and this weekend heralds the 35k wall. This jump may look intimidating, but look beyond it. Do you see it yet?
As we stumble into week four with our hopes shouting encouragement from the stands and our fears betting against us, we look ahead to the last major hurdles. 40k is close, we can almost smell the dark juniper hedging it is made from. The 45k fence is not far ahead of that one, and ahead of that, in a distance, we catch sight of the grand finishing line.

It now all looks possible! Your keyboard finds its second wind and we gallop toward our 50k goal. All bets are off and I’m backing you, oh stalwart NaNo. Trust your keyboard and trust yourself. And always remember that this is a first draft; it’s NOT supposed to be good!

If you find yourself a few jumps behind where you should be then give gentle encouragement to your keyboard horse. Tell him he can do it. Drive him on and topple those hurdles!

Write on!
Tekiegirl
Essex ML

Next event: Write-In at Rayleigh Library, Sunday 22nd November.
Remember to check the calendar at the top of the forums for more events.

Essex forum: http://www.nanowrimo.org/eng/node/1011639
Our chat-room for online meet-ups: http://www.chatzy.com/184439498392
NaNoWriMo official site: http://www.nanowrimo.org

NaNoWriMo 2009 Untitled:
NaNoWriMo 2008 Chosen: 66354 WON