United States :: Alabama :: Birmingham

So WHATS after December?

alliadams — Mon, 31 Dec 2007 14:37:00 -0800

Hey!
I am brand new to this...
loved reading about the achievements in November and curious about how this begins again hopefully in January- which will be TOMORROW!

What a great time to start writing.

I am a writer in Birmingham, write regularly for magazine, and finished writing a book about Birmingham called Birmingham Sketchbook published by a Georgia press (Indigo Publishing)

I am eagar to start a novel and FINISH in 2008 and can't wait to meet you all so I can stick to the task!
Also working on some children's books/ as the writer and illustrator...so juggling and prioritizing will be a chore as well.

But luckily I'm HERE!

What a GREAT source!

Look forward to meeting you!

Alliadams
Birmingham
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United States :: Alabama :: Birmingham

Great TGIO party

Hulagirl10 — Sat, 1 Dec 2007 19:39:21 -0800

Holly thanks for organizing the TGIO!!!

Paul and I had a fantastic time. It was so nice to meet everyone.

Thanks to everyone for all the restaurant recommendations.

Holly please send nanomail regarding the event at Milestone Books. Paul and I definitely want to attend.

Barbara Thank you so much for the invite to Women Writing for a Change.

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United States :: Alabama :: Birmingham

TGIO!!! Yay!!! (RSVP)

soynut — Sun, 25 Nov 2007 20:13:27 -0800

Hello, B'ham area wrimos!

It's hard to believe another NaNo is drawing to a close. Time flies, huh?

No matter how you did this month, all participants are invited to our TGIO gathering where we will be celebrating the fact that NaNo is officially over.

Some of us learned this month, for the first time in our lives, that, yeah, writing a novel is actually possible. How cool is that? Some of us learned that writing a second, third, fourth, or fifth novel is actually possible. Also very cool. Some of us learned that, oh heck yeah, we DO have 20 or 30 or 40 thousand words in us. Tremendously cool! And some of us learned that there are other things in life just as or more important than writing a novel, writing a big ol' short story, or writing at all. Perhaps that is the coolest of all.

Congratulations to everyone!

We will be gathering to toast ourselves, pat each other and ourselves on the back, cry, whine, laugh, vent, and eat some magnificent pizza at:

Jim Davenport's Pizza Palace

2837 Cahaba Road

Mountain Brook, AL 35223

6 p.m.

Saturday, December 1st

PLEASE post here or send me a NaNoMail if you expect to come to our TGIO, so I'll have some idea of how many of us there will be. Of course, you are free to bring a guest. If you will be bringing a guest, please say so so I can count them, too.

Happy noveling!
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Drink coffee. Do stupid things faster and with more energy.

United States :: Alabama :: Birmingham

Help me please!

hollytree — Tue, 27 Nov 2007 17:08:16 -0800

Guys--I am dying over here. I was so excited to get back on track and break 30k, now I am shriveling and dying--I hate my characters, my plot is going nowhere and I am so not ok with quitting. What can I do to get through with this thing? I can't keep writing the crap that has been the last 2k and I am unprepared to let ninjas and pirates take over. I need a plot bunny the size of those giant hares from Russia that can feed a family of 10 for a week.

Dana is pregnant, but can't possibly be without divine intervention.
She has told Father Mark and he is surprisingly calm, feeling that this is not only the salvation of the world, but the sign he has been looking for all his life that he is supposed to be a priest.
He is sitting on her couch promising not to leave her alone with this frightening turn of events.
WHAT NOW? ANYONE???

wah sniffle sniffle
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United States :: Alabama :: Birmingham

3 days, ll minutes & twelve seconds

Hulagirl10 — Tue, 27 Nov 2007 21:53:48 -0800

I cannot believe I'm mere days from my first Nano ending.

At the beginning I was confident I could get the 50K word count completed by the 20th and then I revised that to the 25th. Both dates have come and gone. I'm inching along at the moment. My heroine has just met her hero/antagonist. I'm spending way too much time on making them have witty banter. The books pretty much PG-rated so an easily written torrid sex scene would make my word count reach 50K but I think that would be a cop out.

Off to watch old movies to get in the frame of mind to write witty banter.

Is that light at the end of the tunnel?????????
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United States :: Alabama :: Birmingham

How can I get my profile updated?

Never-the-Twain — Mon, 26 Nov 2007 14:29:56 -0800

I have submitted two word counts, scrambled ms, novel excerpt, yet I'm still showing 0 word count. I've sent 2 emails requesting info. Anyone know what I can do to get updated? I've written 45,000 words.
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United States :: Alabama :: Birmingham

Yay! the big 30,000 word count has been reached! How's everyone else doing?

Hulagirl10 — Sat, 24 Nov 2007 21:47:16 -0800

Got a bit behind this past week. A little bit frustrating since prior to this week I was meetin the daily goal with my word count.

My goal is to be at 40K by the time the sun sets tomorrow.

How is everyone dealing with keeping your word counts increasing durin this busy holiday season?

I took everyone's advice and the poor town of Liberty has just survived an F-4 tornado. Plus I threw in a murder that happened during the storm. Hasn't been a murder in the small town since the fifties when an escapee from the state penitentary rode the train into town.

Give me an update on your progress!

I'm hopelessly nosey on how things are going for my fellow Alabaman's.

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United States :: Alabama :: Birmingham

gatherings - meetings, write-ins - see the first post and the calendar - last write-in is SUNDAY 11/25

soynut — Sun, 21 Oct 2007 20:06:12 -0700

Hey, B'ham area wrimos!

Thoughts on when and where we should have our Kick-Off?

What about next weekend? Perhaps Saturday or Sunday afternoon, the 27th or 28th?

In the past, we've met at Jonathan Benton bookstore, Panera, Starbucks, and Davenport's. We could return to one of those places or meet somewhere new.

See downthread for specific details

EDIT 11/18

I will NOT be at Little Professor Saturday 11/24. I will be there SUNDAY 11/25 from 1 to 3. I've changed the calendar to reflect this. Of course, anyone who wants to meet on Saturday (or any other time and/or place), please feel free to use this thread to coordinate that.

EDIT 10/31

We will be meeting three Saturdays (11/3, 11/10, and 11/24) in November at the cafe in Little Professor Book Center (2717 S. 18th Street Homewood, AL 35209) from 1 to 3 p.m.

EDIT 11/09

Same as above, but adding Saturday 11/17 to the list.
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Drink coffee. Do stupid things faster and with more energy.

United States :: Alabama :: Birmingham

Late Starters

anterae — Thu, 15 Nov 2007 09:45:37 -0800

Hello everyone. My name is Lindsey. I started Nano today. But I'm writing well. I would have to write close to 3500 a day to make it on the 30th. :(
So, anyway, I was wondering if there were any late starters like I. Maybe we could instant message each other to give each other encouragement or ideas. My AIM is lklittle325 and my YIM is fuzedstar.
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United States :: Alabama :: Birmingham

So who has reached the 1/2 way point???

Hulagirl10 — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 22:19:31 -0800

Life has been interfering ~darnitall~

Finally tonight I manged to bang on the keyboard until my word count reached 25K. Yay!!!!

The excitement was short-lived when I realized I am now 10K behind on the daily word count goal.

Oh well, back to the keyboard. It may be time for a tornado or calamity to spice up the word count.

So how are ya'll doing???
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United States :: Alabama :: Birmingham

how's it going?

soynut — Thu, 1 Nov 2007 00:24:35 -0700

So, now that NaNo has officially started, how's everyone doing? Not necessarily just how's your writing going (but please feel free to bask in the glow of your massive word counts), but how are you doing? Is it awesomer or suckier than you could have imagined? Is it just a big ol' steaming cup of meh? Feeling overwhelmed? Stressed out? Over the moon?

Come here and vent, gloat, whine, cry, rage, celebrate...whatever you need.

I am doing okay right now. Trying to hit my goal for 11/1 now so I can go on with the rest of Thursday at least knowing I'm not behind. (FYI: 50,000 words in 30 days breaks down to 1,667 words a day.) But I have buckets of stuff to do this weekend, never mind the rest of November (papers to write, a thesis to finish, and days of volunteer work to do). I think of it this way: If I focus, I can meet my daily word count goal in no more than 2 hours. I can shave 2 hours off most of my daily activities on most days. (Helps to have TiVo!) Some days it'll be an hour, if even that much, but some days it'll be more. My biggest distraction while writing is usually the internet. As smart as it would be to just close my browser while I'm writing, I do like having it open so I can come here and update my word count compulsively, sometimes every 200 or 300 words if writing those few words was like pulling teeth.

A lot of NaNo feels like pulling teeth to me. You just have to be absolutely relentless. DO NOT STOP WRITING WHEN YOU RUN OUT OF STEAM!!! Just don't. Keep writing. No matter what, keep writing. No matter what sort of corner you've written yourself into, you can always write a window there for some zombie ninjas fleeing a pack of vampire pirates to come jumping through, or you can write a sudden and totally inexplicable opening of a portal to another dimension, or you can have your character fall asleep and dream the rest of the novel. Never feel like you don't have any options. This is your novel - your options are limited only by the reach of your imagination. That is to say, there is an infinity of options radiating in every direction from every word you write. If you get stuck, don't be afraid to go off in some weird direction that makes no sense. It'll be fun and noveling should be fun.

No doubt, most of you have enough other stuff in your life already that doing NaNo is a pretty big drain, time-wise if not emotion-wise. You do have to keep your priorities in check, but if you can do this without it wreaking havoc on the rest of your life, you will not be sorry. Come December, it's going to be the coolest thing ever to look back and know you wrote a novel (okay, novella, maybe, but whatever.) Even if it's garbage, there will be something of value in there somewhere. And if you do need to let NaNo go for whatever reasons, don't look upon it as some kind of failure. It's never the wrong thing to do to take care of yourself or your loved ones or attend to your family/job/school/whatever. You can always write later when it's a better time for you. And, of course, NaNo is every November.

Crap, I can't count this for my word count! Dang! (It's over 600 words!) Oh well.

So, how's it going?
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Drink coffee. Do stupid things faster and with more energy.

United States :: Alabama :: Birmingham

AIM

TimRNalley — Fri, 2 Nov 2007 16:52:01 -0700

So I got this idea for a forum on the myspace Nanowrimo group. Post your AIM screen names if you have one. That way you can share the joy/misery, love/hate, laughing/crying that is Nanowrimo. I've been talking to a few people I met on the myspace board and have found it rather refreshing.

So mine is FantasyWriterTRN. I'm almost always on. I'll just put up my away message when I'm writing so everyone knows to leave me alone.
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United States :: Alabama :: Birmingham

Birmingham Writers Speak Up!

Tycho Brahe — Wed, 3 Oct 2007 07:37:50 -0700

Where are you, who are you, and what are you writing?

FYI I'm one of your local public librarians, and I'll be churning out a sword-n-sorcery fantasy hack-n-slash adventure for my first Nano. Any more experienced writers out there? Any success stories and/or tales of horror? Let us know!
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2007: Nightfall in Majadan
~~~~~~~
“Writing is easy. You only need to stare at a piece of blank paper until your forehead bleeds” - Douglas Adams

United States :: Alabama :: Birmingham

resources, references, useful info, etc.

soynut — Fri, 2 Nov 2007 13:59:57 -0700

I've seen some of you mentioning resources you've found for help with your characters and such. How about posting them here?

If it's important to you to feel like you're on track with your word count, here is where you should be each day:

11/1: 1667
11/2: 3334
11/3: 5001
11/4: 6668
11/5: 8335
11/6: 1002
11/7: 11669
11/8: 13336
11/9: 15003
11/10: 16670
11/11: 18337
11/12: 20004
11/13: 21671
11/14: 23338
11/15: 25005 (DON'T GIVE UP!!! It gets better!)
11/16: 26672
11/17: 28339
11/18: 30006
11/19: 31673
11/20: 33340
11/21: 35007
11/22: 36674
11/23: 38341
11/24: 40008
11/25: 41675
11/26: 43342
11/27: 45009
11/28: 46676
11/29: 48343
11/30: 50010

I am sure most of you have a favorite writing software to use, but I thought I'd toss this out in case anyone's unhappy with what you're using and wants to look into something different.

RoughDraft

yWriter

Both of these were designed by writers for writers, so you might find they work better for creative writing than something like Word. Both are also FREE. I haven't used yWriter, but I hear good things about it. I've been using RoughDraft for years, since before I started doing NaNo, and I've been very, very happy with it.

So what are your most valuable resources during NaNo? Or information that's useful to you that you'd like to share?
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Drink coffee. Do stupid things faster and with more energy.

United States :: Alabama :: Birmingham

Municipal Liaison Appreciation Day

JaniceWD — Thu, 8 Nov 2007 02:56:20 -0800

In honor of ML Appreciation Day,
I hope I am the first to say ...

H..elpful
O..rganized
L..earn-ed
L..ovely
E..asy-going
Y..ou, yes you!

We love you Holley (aka Soynut)!!

Thanks for all you do,
Thanks for being you!!!

Hugs,
Janice
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JaniceWD
2007: Kin Keeper

United States :: Alabama :: Birmingham

Who's the ML for the Birmingham Region?

JaniceWD — Thu, 11 Oct 2007 14:36:49 -0700

I'm interested in participating in write-ins and possibly other in-person activities. Does the Birmingham Group have a ML yet? If not, will somebody please volunteer? I can't--maxed out on volunteer literary leadership obligations--but I'd love to follow someone else's lead for a change. My Tuesdays are booked but I can usually manage other days or nights. I write full-time, well, as often as my fibromyalgia allows. Writing my second novel for this NaNo, a Grit(ty) Lit, aka a character-driven novel. Think Larry Brown, Dorothy Allison, Rick Bragg--but not quite that lyrical or polished yet--maybe one day. Agent hunting for novel #1.

Thanks,
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JaniceWD
2007: Kin Keeper