[STICKY] Introduce yourself!

Hi I am luvssnape aka April,
I am excited to start nanowrimo again this year. I have participated for 3 years and still have not won but have had a blast giving it a shot. I am hoping that this year can be the year.

I am excited about coming to some of the write ins and such. I have not been to a live event and am looking forward to it.

Hi! I'm Becky, aka Sapphire here on the forums. This will be my sixth year doing NaNoWriMo and I've won twice so far. I'm hoping to net a third win this year. :)

2003: Psion - A girl with psionic powers tries to escape from the clutches of an organization determined to study her as if she were a lab rat.
2004: The Burning Gears - The crew of a spaceship finds themselves wanted after a criminal sneaks on board and wreaks havoc.
2005: Wanderer - The precusor to Broken Worlds, I got maybe 1,000 words in before giving up. My worst NaNo year ever, but it was followed by the best:
2006: Broken Worlds AND The Fourteenth Man - In Broken Worlds, a man who wakes up in a new world every day finds himself suddenly stuck in one place--and for the first time in his life, he sees someone he recognizes from the day before. In The Fourteenth Man, a human test subject for a deadly strain of flu escapes from the lab he is held in, seeking revenge by spreading the disease to as many people as he can.
2007: A Bit of Human Driftwood - A dockworker finds himself caught between a crime lord and a bad place.

2008 will be entitled "The Watchtower Lies". I'm going to try and complete it while also taking a week off, doing my comic (http://www.hatpire.com) and working fulltime. Whee!

I'm Rob, I've participated the last three years, but haven't won yet. However, I'm optimistic this year, because this will be the first year where I don't have school during November that also demands I turn in a page count every week. While I haven't won yet, two of my novel ideas did continue to live on as screenplays. I have no idea what I'll be writing this year, but that's always the fun.

Hi, my name is Vicki and I have decided to join in again this year. I came to your kick off two years ago at the Barnes and Noble and "attempted" to participate. At the time though I was a homeschooling mom of three and worked part time! Needless to say I only got about 1000 words written and can't even remember what my novel was suppose to be about! Last year I worked full time and didn't even try. I had no time to even sleep! Let alone write a novel. (Although I thought of you all typing away.) This year, however, all three kids are in school and I am only working part time as I build a private practice so I figured this is the year.

Unfortunately, my husband works most weekends and I truly doubt I will be able to make any of the write ins or events as much as I would love to attend. Maybe I'll be lucky and get to one or two.

-Vicki

Hi there! I'm Kathleen. This is my second year. My 2 children (10 and 7) also participated last year but none of us won. We came to one or two events last year. We're hoping to be more active this year, and to complete our goals on time!!! =D My 7 year old is very excited to start writing again with the young writers program, and my son is wavering on whether he wants to join in this year. The kids won't be able to attend any of the events in Oct (we don't have much going on, but they're all on just the perfectly wrong days. lol), but I will - and the kids will start joining me in November.

Last year we wrote about;
a little girl with psychic abilities even she didn't know about (me)
a group of kids trying to avert an interstellar war (ds9)
a lost Pegasus trying to find her family (dd6)

Hi! I have returned =]

I'm Louisa, and I write incomplete stories. But I will skip the long and boring confession of the fact that I can't really finish anything (well, occasionally it has been known to happen, but it involves a lot of pain and rarely gets quite the way I want it).

In any case, I've participated in NaNo twice, reaching 50k both times, This year I'll be 700 miles away for most of November (yay for college?), home for Thanksgiving and a week in October so I may show up at one of the planning sessions or a write-in if I can manage it. (And if I do so, there will be cookies.)

I'm a little concerned about juggling NaNo this year with classes and work, but hopefully it'll work out...

In 2006: I wrote a modern/urban fantasy about what basically amounted to the elven secret service. There were also green-blooded vampire sunblock-salesmen involved, and a floating train.

In 2007: I attempted to write something without any fantasy at all: a murder mystery set on a college campus in the Midwest (Minnesota, to be specific).

As aforementioned, they both resulted in over 50,000 words, but neither one was/is finished. T_T

I'm Joe, aka Corrupted Flame (and The Guilty Gear and Sol Badguy when the occasion calls for it). This is my sixth NaNo. I've won twice and had a strange, meandering participation.

2003: The Evening Star - Several demon hunters make their way to Manhattan to confront a demon that has submerged most of the Eastern seaboard in the Atlantic.
2004: All Too Real - A guitarist for a metal band attempts to balance out work, her relationship, and the relationship that she actually wants.
2005: Sword of Dawn - A woman, granted vision by a god, must find a legendary sword for reasons that she does not yet know. Thanks to the write-ins and friendly Naperville chapter of NaNo, this was the first year that I crossed the finish line.
2006 (book 1): The Ashes of the Phoenix - A ship's captain ends up prisoner after being framed by pirates. With the help of a strange cellmate (who is also the captain of the pirate ship that framed her), she has to escape prison and clear her name. This one was also a winner.
2006 (book 2): Philosophy and Sorrow - A group of heroes must save an ancient artifact from the head of the church who intends to use it for world domination. My third winning story.
2006 (book 3): The Nonsensical Ravings of the Lunatic Mind - A journal of a girl in an insane asylum who seems to believe that she has super powers. This one wasn't finished.
2007: Untitled - Several students deal with friendships and rivalries in a school for superheroes.

2003, 2004, and 2007 were all abysmal failures. 2006 was really good, though. I'm just worried about trying to live up to that ever again. ;) [Now I know how Bruenor felt when he finished creating the Aegis Fang. (Sorry, I'm a nerd.)]

Hi! I'm CobaltSnow, and I am a complete and total NEWBIE =)

I'm kind of nervous, but mostly pretty excited, and I can't wait for November 1!

Hello. =) I'm blueskyes, aka Meredith, and I am also a complete and utter newbie!

I've been writing for a while, I've finished a couple of short works: works that I would be humiliated to show to anyone now (but my parents keep proudly shoving copies on other people, much to my embarrassment).

Anyway. I'm very, very excited to start NaNo; it seems like a really great...event/organization/thing? Yeah, very exciting. It may even motivate me to finish my first novel! Huzzah!

Soyeah.
Bonjour.
x)

I'm Brianna, the most annoying one here. But not anymore. I kinda mellowed out a lot over the summer (probably from the DRUGS!.. only not really). I'm hoping to actually FINISH this year. The first year I did this I had 200 words. Then the next year it was 20,000 words. With any luck I'll get at least over 50K. I kinda have a cooler story line this year, so it's all good.

I'm really tired, so I'm not going to say much more.. Because it probably wont make sense. Yay for staying up 'til midnight watching Ska bands and stalking down short boys with mohawks until we can finally get our picture taken.

Oh yeah, I got a job too.. so my weekends are pretty much booked for me. YAY! But fortunately, with my job I get at least an hour of straight downtime that I can use to write.

Hi, I'm Jeff (aka Emperor_Nero) and this is my second year of attempting NaNo.

Last year I met the goal with my erotic story Exploring Desire, getting about 60 thousand words written in November and finally finished the story in December at 80,500 words. It still needs a serious editing (which I hope to get to sometime before the end of the year), but it is the story of Laurie and Alex Garland, as they explore their inner desires with forays into swinging, polyamory, bisexuality and BDSM before finally realizing that the most imporant desire for both of them is just being together.

This year's story is planned to be another erotic story, the synopsis of which is on my author info page (if anybody is interested).

As I've now moved closer to the Naperville area, I hope to be more involved this year with some of the write-ins and other events ... so hope to see you all in person at one of those.

Hey there, I'm Molly (I know I'm real creative with my user name). I'm a complete newbie to NaNo, but have tried my hand at writing in the past. Mostly it has been fanfic that I've been too embarrassed to even post, but I'm excited to have an original plot running in my head just in time for November.

I'm a non-profit accountant by day, but come evening the bohemian writer within emerges. I'm looking forward to consuming enough caffeine to power a small island nation and getting to know everyone here.

Molly

I'm Katherine and I'm a co-ML. I've done Nano twice now, but have been writing novels for a very long time.
- After revising, and polishing, and making gradual changes to my 2006 novel called Safe at Work, I just reordered the whole book--causing massive changes, but perhaps fixing the structural problem I had with it. I wrote 78,000 words and
completed the first draft in November.

- in 2007, my novel was French Impression, and I managed to write 138,000 words and complete the first draft in November. It's Miriam's, a forty-eight year old American, first day in Paris and she automatically answers the ringing cell phone, only to discover that she's just slept with her new French boss's husband. The story is told from both women's point of view.

Both of these books have been critiqued on www.critiquecircle.com (and continue to be critiqued there.)

This year may be more of a challenge since I recently had to go to full-time work, and I'm co-ML which means more time in the forums than I usually spend. Also, I'm trying to have this year's book take place in 24 hours in Edinburgh--which may be a tough challenge for me since I usually have at least weeks, if not months, pass during a book. However, I can always ditch that if it impedes my word count.

On the plus side, my husband and daughter (the one who still lives at home) are also doing NaNoWriMo, so our whole house is Nano-centered in November.

KatherineWriting

Hello. I am Jamjam, also Sean. This will be my first time actually participating in Nano Wrimo, even though I meant to do it last year as well. I enjoy writing fantasy, mostly, so that is my current plan for next month. This year, I should be able to focus more on Nano, so I plan on coming to as many events as possible. Can't wait to get started.

I'm Jacob, a second years Master student. I'm at the University of Akron at Ohio now, but commute to Naperville region often enough for family stuff that I can be in touch with this network. I've preciously worked on a few things, but only pariticipated in Nano in 2007 with Fear and Familiarity, a novel about alienation and isolation in modern America. Also the less exciting CIA work, and how family obligations come into play when your cousin joins a cult.

This year I'm planning Mindbleed a near-future work that deals with how alien contacts makes people instill dystopian regimes. The U.S anyway, and a bunch of other places that aren't significant to the course of my novel. Special guest star appearances by the ominuous Department of Science Fiction, the military orbital station the Millard Fillmore, and an intervention by the ambassador from a non-Dystopian Ireland.

I'm Sabrina (the daughter still at home), and I've participated in NaNo once before. I managed to get to the 50K, and even finish my book several months later.

This year I'm writing an urban fantasy about four girls who work magic. I haven't figured out a lot of the details, but that's what planning sessions are for.

I'm Paul. I participated in NaNo in 2006 and won with a far future science ficition project. That novel remains unfinished as I'm working on shopping my first novel to the professional market. I haven't fully decided if I'm formally going to participate in Nano. I'm still working on the project from 2006, and would like to finish that draft before I start a new project, but the temptation to start something new is very strong. Either way, I'm planning on being at a few of the NaNo write ins in the hopes that the collective spirit will either encourage me to continue and finish what I started, or spur me forward into a new project.

Hi, I'm Faith. This is technically my 2nd NaNoWriMo but de facto my first. Last year I didn't go to any events, wrote 2,000 words of dreck on day 1, got interrupted day 2, and never recovered. I'm hoping to do better this year. To help me get in the groove I went to today's kickoff (invigorating!) and hope to make it to the remaining October events and some of the write-ins.

In real life I'm a business analyst and user experience designer. Ux Design is all about character and narrative, so I am curious whether that will jump start my effort or turn NaNoWriMo into moonlighting. Maybe I'll give in and make Kari, the Web app user and harried home economist who works in a test kitchen, one of my characters!

Hey, Tim!

This is my 5th and final NaNo. I finally replaced my 8-year-old laptop with hefty widescreen one, so I'm ready as I'll ever be. (The old one had about 1 hour of battery life, and was running Windows Me on 128 MB of RAM and 30GB of storage. I know...sad, sad, sad.) This means I may actually make it to some write-ins this time.

(Shout-out to Faith: I'm a business analyst and PMP with some grad school in user experience design.)

Last year, my mom passed away just as NaNo began, but I made it through (and welcomed the distraction of those 1600 words every day). This year's "distraction" is much more positive: a sweet little 10-month-old puppy (my first-ever dog). Can't wait until November 1st!

Fired up!
Ready to go!

:)

Hello! I'm Jennifer, the one who disappears every year as soon as NaNo is over and is hardly heard from until just before November the next year. I'm pretty sure this will be my fourth year of NaNoWriMo but I'm starting to get confused. ^_^; I keep having to check the date of when I joined the website! However I have managed to scrape through every year - last year was really tough though, dealing with a nasty job situation and no internet access.

Dragon Fall was my first attempt at NaNo, and the novel I hate the most. It was fantasy and terrible.
Almost Home came out much better. Rather than the serious tone I tried with Dragon Fall, I went with fantasy/humor and that worked out much better.
2007 brought a novel I never could find a relevant title for. It was fantasy with a very slight touch of humor and didn't exactly go where I wanted it to.

2008 should be fun, as I'm sticking with what works for me (fantasy) and what I'm into right now (music).

In the non-writing scheme of things, I work at GameStop in Montgomery (I finally secured a transfer to a slower store, huzzah!), have no internet at home (still), and am happily married to Daemon_Master, who is known to get dragged to occasionnal write-ins. :)

Hi!

My name is Mike and this is my first NaNoWriMo. I tried earlier this year to do my own Personal Novel Writing Month (PerNoWriMo) and failed spectacularly. So I have decided to try it again, this time in the propper month and with all the support structures a group like this offers. I'm very excited and looking forward to November.

I missed the first meet-up, but I hope to be able to attend further meet-ups and write-ins.

Mike

Hi, Breanna here.

This is my fourth year of Nano and I've yet to win. Usually I do pretty good until about the third week of November (when Finals start hitting, or I have a major paper due or something). But this year I'm out of school so hopefully I will be able to stick with those 1667, and make it through despite working two jobs and babysitting my (2-year old) niece twice a week. I'm gonna be busy! I can't wait.

Hey out there! I'm Mary Jo AKA MJCwriter as a "teacher" on the YWPNANO site.

Just joined NANO for the first time ever and thought a local group of NANO'ies would do me good.

I'm a full time working mom to two boys, o I'll need all the support I can get.

I have recently started teaching a young writers group at the Downers Grove Public Library, which led to a 5 wk teaching opportunity with FRoG (Friends of the Gifted and Talented.) So...I'll be encouraging my students to particpate in NANO as well.

Sorry to miss the first meeting, but will try to be there in the future. I plan to bring my 9-year-old son, David, along to keep up his passion for writing.

I began a novel years ago, but recently lost the desire to continue. I'm hoping NANo will get my novel writing mojo back!

~ Mary Jo

I'm Mike, aka horatio, and I'm returning for the third year of Nanowrimo. My goal is to complete my time travel trilogy that I began two years ago. Last year I left way too many dangling plot threads that are just begging to be tied up.

2006: Variation Seven: The story of a woman who comes to possess a time-traveling device and finds herself in a history-changing war between two rival groups of time travelers.

2007: Strange Times: History gets further tangled as new time travelers show up -- friends or foes?

2008: ???

Yo! I'm Rose, a college student living in Wheaton, and this is my second year attempting Nanowrimo and I hope to be successful again. I did most of my novel writing last year at work or incredibly late at night, and I've been looking forward to November all year.

2007: The Forest. It has a convoluted and near-senseless plot, but there's a murder, a wraithlike girl with magical powers, gender debates, and intrigue aplenty in this one part fantasy, two parts mystery set in the caste-based land of City.

2008: Fearless Caravan. We'll see how this one goes . . .

Having just completed Stephen King's "On Writing," my goal for this Nano is to eliminate adverbs in my writing. I'm superfluously descriptive.

//She sneaks into Nano under the cover of darkness. Stealthily, she pretends like she kept writing her novel and actually finished last year. Perhaps she can rest on the laurels of nano successes in 2005 and 2006. Surely that provides adequate coverage for last year's debacle.//

Ha. Ok. So, I blew it last year. As every Cubs fan knows, hope springs eternal.

I've written chick lit, historical romance and contemporary romance. This year is a straightforward fiction story, I think. (I hope).

Anyway...nice to "see" some old buddies, hope to meet you others! :-)

Laura

Hi, I'm Brian, and this will be the 4th Nano I've participated in, however I've still only won once. In 2005, I wrote a little over 50k, in 2006 I dropped out early to make a flash game for a contest (which won me $5,000) and only wrote 6k, and last year I wrote approximately 35k, having the time to do a full 50k, but for some reason I just ran out of steam near the end.

And to be honest, this is not looking like the year for a 2nd win, but I'm going to give it a go anyway. I've always had two dreams competing with each other, and lately the game development dream has been kicking the butt of the writing dream, and this year's no exception. Microsoft is launching a new service sometime late November/early December that allows amateur game developers to upload and sell games directly to Xbox 360 owners, and I want to release something (specifically, a more full-featured version of a game that won their game development contest the prior year) as close to its launch period as possible, since launch titles always sell amazingly (one person made $250,000 with a simple triangle puzzle game -- called Trism -- when the iPhone game system launched...I don't expect to make that much, but I'm hoping it will be at least 5 figures).... so November is already going to be super-busy for me creatively.

But I can't work on that 24/7, so I'm going to try to get 25k words written this month, which I can probably come close to doing just by attending most of the write-ins.

While we're at it, if you've got a PSP and need something to take your mind off your novel every once in awhile (or to treat yourself for winning after November!), there's an anime/fantasy turn-based-strategy game coming out on Oct. 28 that I helped produce called Neverland Card Battles. Its website has a lot more information: http://www.neverlandcardbattles.com. It's the first packaged game I worked on, so I'm pretty excited about it. It also helps that the game is a lot of fun as well.

Hi, I'm Sheeva. . .
I'm new to NaNoWriMo but this looks like so much fun. Well, when I'm faced with a deadline and with the goal of 50,000 words, I will see if I've got the guts.

I joined Naperville as opposed to Chicago because this group seemed newer and smaller and, besides, Chicago gets it's Lion Share of everything anyway.

I'm still exploring the website, so I don't have much to say now.
Thanks *smiles*
Sheeva

I was avoiding this, but I guess I finally got around to doing this...

I'm Christina and 19... This is my second year at COD and I still don't know what I'm going to major in (could be physics, history, english, or something else entirely like political science!). I'm a student full-time and I also work part-time at the college as well, so it'll be harder to squeeze in the time now!

I've been doing NaNo for four years, but the first year was a flop (I wasn't committed to it at all and I joined late, so giving up seemed a logical option). The other three years, though, have been very successful! I'm not sure what this year's novel will be about, but I think I want to do historical fiction, but I don't have a title or a culture/time period set or any characters. As you can clearly see, I've got plenty of planning ahead of me that I'm excited to do, actually... I just need to find the time to do it!

I'm Dave, and this will be my third year participating in NaNoWriMo--I won both years that I participated. My novel is screaming to be written already, and it is hard not to start writing. I have the genre, general plot outline and title in mind. Much like the first two books I wrote here, I'm letting my dreams write a few chapters. Looking forward to typing away in the wee hours here in my hotel room in beautiful Sterling, VA during the week, and from Sweet Home Naperville on weekends. Good luck to all!