Madison Roll Call

Welcome, Ariella! My experience is that this is the BEST place for NaNoWrMo (remember that great celebratory cake last year, guys?) I have a fondness for all things Canadian, and if you want to know cool stuff about Madison or the history of Wisconsin, I'm your....well, not *man*, but --grandmaw?

I'm doing it again, after succeeding last year and I'll be VERY excited to see all y'all (we talk like that where I come from...Nor' Dakota) at our launch party. 'Course, being as it's during the DAY on November 1, I expect you'll all have a few thousand words started, YAAAS?

Now I'm off to supper - I'm at a weekend Writing Retreat, how appropriate is THAT

FONDLY!

dale-harriet

Welcome, everyone, for another good year of writing madness. Bwahahaha!

Last year seriously rocked, with many of us crossing the 50K line and having a whole lot of fun in the process. Cool weather, noveling write-ins, and hot beverages make for a good November in my book. And if everyone does well again this year, I'm sure another sugar-loaded cake concoction might just make an appearance...

So start lining up the plot monkeys, novelists! October's here, so we're nearing the starting line!

Bex

Hello, Madison!

I'm Elizabeth, twenty-five years old, just moved to Janesville this summer from western Washington state. Settling in with my wonderful husband and ninteen-year-old sister in our new apartment, currently working two jobs, and trying to calculate just how little sleep I can function on during the month of November.

'Course, I'm still trying to nail down a good plot idea too, but since when has that mattered at the beginning of October?

~*~*~*~*~*~

"I sought the Lord, and He answered me, and delivered me from all my fears."

Hi everyone. This is my first year, but I'm really excited. I just got my first job teaching chemistry at West HS, but I hope I can still commit the time needed to follow through on this. My idea is still pretty muddy, but it's getting there.

Woot!

The universe is a big place, perhaps the biggest.
-Kilgore Trout

Hi everyone! My name is Carolyne & I'm 34 years old. I've been living in Madison for 12 years now, though I also attended middle school here, back in the day. It's my first NaNoWriMo too & I am VERY excited! It's so cool to get to meet others in the area who are doing this.

I am working on my outline this weekend. I haven't done one of those in ages. I tend to develop this stuff in my head. I usually write my ideas for stories down, just not in such an "official" way. Of course, years later I cannot for the life of me remember everything I thought I'd be able to! Perhaps this will be a good habit for me to pick up. lol

I look forward to getting to know everyone better! :)

~CK

Carolyne,

No worries about outlines, ideas,, &c. We all work different ways, so there's no "right or wrong". There are guidelines somewhere on here......I'll have to look myself, as I don't remember them either. It's absolutely HUGE fun and speaking for myself, I wound up with a lot of useful information about writing along with my edition of the novel that makes "It was a dark and stormy night" look like Classical Fiction.

dale-harriet

Alafax,

If you're brave enough to teach Chemistry -- to HIGH SCHOOLERS -- you for SURE have the courage to write a novel in 30 days! Congratulations on your job - and you know, even though it *is* a Chemistry class, I bet you'll get ... what do they call it..."street cred" if you talk about doing NaNoWriMo!

dale-harriet

Hello, Mad City Nanos.

Another first timer here, tho I've been thinking about this and following it for years. This time, After checking with my wife, I signed up. And I'm very excited as well. No ages here but let's just say that we moved to Madison after college (U of I in Champaign-Urbana) and this year is our 30th year here. You can do the math.

After a recent success in an 80 word short story contest - I won the Rocket Science Wine Writing Contest and my story will appear on the back label of every 750 ml bottle of their Rocket Science Wine - I decided that this was the year for Nano. 80 words, 50k words, heh, just a few more hours at the computer, right. I even talked my son into it, too.

Architect by day, mad crazed writer of children's humorous sci fi by night. But for Nano I'm making a break. Can a guy write a chick lit novel? My story "Between Heaven and a Big Sky" follows a middle aged woman fed up with Wisconsin weather so she follows her boyfriend to New Mexico. She is looking for heaven but all she finds is a big sky. It's not a romance but more of a comedy of errors, based on life transitions. I'm hoping it will be very funny. And if Sandra Bullock wants to turn it into a movie, I won't stand in her way.

I'm looking forward to suffering with all of you.

Bill

Support your local Elvis.

mmmmmm Celebration cake. That was quite a good cake.

Now that I'm finished being distracted by food I might as well introduce myself. I'm James Dubeau and this is my second year doing NaNo. You can find me on twitter as @jamwes. Last year was a great time and I look forward to cranking out another 50k word piece this year. Last year was an action/adventure/pulp treasure hunting story. This year will be a fantasy adventure. Since I can never get any work done at home I’m usually found out and about. Last year I found myself at the State Street Starbucks quite a bit. It was a good centralized location for people to meet at and their upper level has a bunch of comfy chairs and a fireplace. During November I usually check on here to see where other people are at and post where I’ll be headed. Having someone sitting next to you clacking away on the keys is a great motivation to keep writing. Sometimes that extra push is what is needed to get those words on the page.

I look forward to meeting all you new NaNo goers this year. May we get many a word upon the digital screen this year.

-James

-Jamwes

You can't edit a blank page.

"A gat in the hand is worth the world by it's tail." -Sam Spade, The Maltese Falcon

Pleasure to meet you all. It's neat to see how many different types of people participate. Looking forward to toiling away with you next month.

I'm back. My younger daughter groaned dramatically at the news, immediately assuming that my decision would impact her Thanksgiving plans. She is correct. I hope to see many of you on the 1st, but it won't be until later in the day. Good luck to all!

Many paths lead to the garden.

My name is Joe Alfano and I am returning again this year. Of course I am also considering changing my login to synch with all of the others as well as the nickname a friend gave me a few years back that stuck.

You can find me on Twitter as @Zombie_Joe or on Facebook.

Depending on where I am at by the end of the month, I might be working on my third revision of "100,000 Word Pile" but my plan is to start something new. I live on the east side of Madison now (out by Eastgate theater) so many of my "write-ins" will be on the east side. Possibly a couple downtown since that is where I work.

Can wait to see you all at launch!

Hello Madison Peeps!

I'm so excited to get going on this. This is my second or third year (I forgot). I'm 50 and I've been writing young adult books since 1998 (none published). I've been more interested in writing them for the fun of it rather than publishing them, but who knows what this year holds. The last couple of Nano's Ya-fantasy world stuff - trolls, fairies, etc. but this time I'm trying my hand at a kind of paranormal romance with a twist. I've never been good at plotting. I start out knowing my main character names, the setting, and that's about it. I just let the story play out in my head like a movie. I want the fun of seeing where it all is going to lead to. I just wish I could figure out how to get all that detail on paper like I see it in my mind.

I'm also an eastsider and my normal hangouts tend to be at Borders, Barnes & Noble and Half-price books (they are my Disney World). Lol.

I'm looking forward to this challenge. I've got everything on my desk shoved into a box, a clean coffee cup, and a big bag of David's sunflower seeds and red hots ready and waiting. I'll have to set aside my computer hidden object games for month (shudder), and head down to the writing cave.

Let's see how excited I am when I'm at the half-way mark or the night before the deadline. Lol.

Have a blast writing everyone. I always do.

Kilan (Sherry)

Hello everyone!
I'm 28 and have been in the area for a few years for grad school. I finished my teaching certification in May and now I'm working as a 'freelance educator' for a few area school districts. I'm writing my master's thesis this semester so NaNoWriMo should be a fun diversion. This is my fourth NaNo and I'm hoping to write the second half of the fantasy novel I won with last year.

Hi everyone,

Another first-timer (and first-poster!) here. I used to write science-fiction back when I had more time, and I'm now interested in writing for YA, so my attempt will be a science-fiction novel for YA! November is going to be a pretty hectic month for me, with a day job, part-time consulting work, and NaNoWriMo. I must have been crazy to sign up, but I figured if I don't do it now, I probably never will.

I look forward to hearing from you and joining in the effort.

Hi! I'm a 21-year-old student at the University, complete first-timer. I'm writing soft sci-fi and pretty sure that I'm biting off more than I can chew with school and my boyfriend coming home for two weeks of leave in November from Iraq AND this writing, but I'm giving it a shot! The story is plotted out, so maybe I have a shot.

Hi everyone. I am also new to Madison and this is my first year in WriMo, so I'm looking forward to meeting people. As my username would indicate, I like working fairy tale elements into urban fantasy. I've been writing for years, but seem to lose steam when writing longer fiction and have therefore stuck to short stories. So now, no more excuses.

Hi! I'm Anna, a first-timer who finally got sucked in by a friend who's been Nanoing for years now. I'm working on a modern fantasy novel that will involve a great deal of Greek mythology, which means I get to spend a chunk of this month researching. After spending long enough co-writing non-fiction essays, I finally was convinced to give fiction a try. Heavens help me?

Hiya, second-timer here. I think I got 20,000 words in 2005, but I found the task fairly daunting as a student. These days I'm working full-time, but I've got the evenings all to myself, so hopefully I can keep plugging til the end. I just got a new Asus netbook (powered by Linux! Exciting!) so I'm excited to write on Wednesdays at Espresso Royale downtown ($2 latte day!). I'm not sure what I'm going to write yet, but I have ideas:

*continue my 2005-try about a priest questioning his role as a priest
*horror/mystery about a woman angry at an ex-boyfriend
*modern reworking of the creepy fairy tale "Bluebeard"
*something completely different?!

Hi Everybody, I'm writing with a Seeing Eye dog on my lap. He's lobbying for an early dinner. I hope to make the launch party. I've been successful at nano for 2 years. I write a whimsical sf series a large cat-like being who is baffled by human society. I write for my own entertainment. I'm not much of a forum person but just wanted you to know I'm here. I'm enjoying the introductions.

Merrill

Hi all,
This will be my fifth NaNoWriMo - I've been doing this since 2003 and have finally gotten over the whole "my marriage and life can only take this every two years" thing. My husband is a wonderful NaNoWriMo enabler.

This will, however, be the first year I have absolutely no idea what to write about. Usually I'm fiddling with ideas from September on, and have a fair outline of the first few chapters by Nov 1. This makes me nervous and uncertain if continuing is a wise idea, and then I remember that this is never a wise idea.

I've been here in Madison for a couple years now - and was in Champaign before that, bbibo :)

I hope we have delicious cake again. I think the sugar buzz faded sometime in February. Looking forward to meeting/ seeing folks :)

I have a netbook this year too! Mine's an EEEPC (I think). Of course, I'll still probably be working a lot on Daisy, my beloved laptop,but for convenience NOTHING beats Hermione! (That's my netbook.) Both Daisy and Hermione have an infrared mouse of her own; the touchpads are fine but I find that the "benign tremor" (O BANE OF MY EXISTENCE) makes the touchpads a little ... touchy. (Had to say it.) I guess I ought to do my "Roll Call" thing too, for them wot wasn't around last year:

I'm 66 (ignore the creaking, it's my joints), work at the Historical Museum on the Square and I'm a children's book writer, officially. Errhhmmm...no, not published. But this is the year. (She said,optimistically.) Last year's NaNo novel was sort of fairy-tale-ish,and I think there's probably a good story buried in there, although I haven't gone back to root around in it since finishing(!) My husband actually DID read it cover to cover -- his remark? "Good story, but -- it's a little wordy." (YOU THINK?)

I'm going at it as I did last year: I'll formulate the most general notion (i.e., Ancient Greece?) and then sit down and crank. I'm looking forward HUGELY to starting again, and to getting together with the Madtown crowd. As a Jewish Bubbeh I may feel obligated to make suggestions from time to time ("I'm freezing cold here -- go put on a sweater"). The first?
Now, don't be staying out drinking too late on Halloween, ladies and gentlemen - NoNowriMo starts at midnight!

Merrill - I'm intrigued! A large cat-like being....with a Seeing Eye dog on its lap? That's a hook if there ever was one! {grin}

Dale-Harriet

Kindred spirits, fairytalerewrite! I've never managed anything very long either (last year's novel excluded): my stories tend to the fantasy/faery as well, sometimes with historical bits worked on. I write kidlit, but more the short story type than not.

Dale-Harriet

Sherry - ANOTHER kindred spirit! I"m working on YA too, more or less...maybe. Also unpublished yet but determined to "do it" this year. We can cheer each other on. I'm clearing out my writing den too, and in my case it's tea and pizzelles (and stupid solitaire games on Facebook, saints presarve me). I'm on the near West - but can be easily lured to a either B&N, I bet.

dale-harriet

Good afternoon my fellow Madison Nano-knights!

My name is Cal_3 and this is my second year diving into the NaNoWriMo swamps. Last year I won with 50K words of a mystery/thriller and will finish the project this week! (I will, I promise!)

You see, I don't live in Madison, I currently attend school in UW-Whitewater as a sophomore in creative writing (if there ever was a higher calling). I try to take part in the Mad-town antics but, really, its a struggle. This year, though, along with my drastic genre change (mystery/thriller to social sci-fi) I'll also be changing my social habits for Nano and try and make it to some of the get-togethers.

I've already mapped out the majority of the story, as for the bigger plot points. I have my characters and already have a growing relationship with each of them.

I...cant...wait!

Nano 2008: Dear Father (50,010/50,000)
Nano 2009: Iced Earth (0/50,000)

Floating cities cradle humanity above a frozen Earth. Something is amiss. A group of strangers struggle to reveal the truth.

Hey Madison! (:

I'm new to the Madison group this year, going to school in the area for Biotechnology and Biophysics, which should make this year's Nano much more difficult!
Anyways, my name is Viva and I moved here recently from Brazil. I won my first year in 2008 with about 51,000 words with a Historical Fiction, and this year hope to take another 50,000 words with a mainstream fiction. (: I have this year's Nano only vaguely planned out, but I find that I write best not having things mapped out super well. My characters and I have grown close in the past few days, however.

I'm really excited! Hope to get to meet some of you. (:

2008 - Somewhere Down the Crazy River - 50,088
2009 - The Autobiography of an Imaginary Friend

I'm actually on the fence about trying to do full-out NaNoWriMo this year. I'm in second year of vet school, so I'm already doing a balancing act with my schedule, but I really enjoyed the 10,000 words I wrote last year! I think my goal is to double that and maybe end up with a short story, but who knows--maybe I'll be suddenly inspired partway through and make it to 50k! (It will entirely depended on how often I get called in to overnight emergencies during the month, I think)

At any rate, I'll haunt the forums and splurge in thousand word writing sprints :)

Hi everyone!

It's going to be my fifth Nano this year. I also tend to write YA books, most of which are fantasy stories. Last year I ended up with an animal fantasy book starring a hedgehog detective. This year I'm writing a book about a high school student becoming a werewolf because of a mosquito bite (I blame my homework last spring. I read 2 or three books on yellow fever for my library school class on YA lit).

I'm 28 years old and work at an elementary school in a couple of different classrooms. I'm going slowly through library school at one class a semester.

Dale-harriet, your job sounds like a lot of fun.

Looking forward to Nano and writing a bunch!

I actually live north of Madison, between Deforest and Poynette, but Madtown is my spiritual and job home. This will be my 4th year of NaNo, but (I hope) the first year I actually finish. Two of the other novels are promising and still in progress. I usually write poetry, but doing NaNo has made short fiction seem far less intimidating; Expanded Horizons just bought a second SF story from me. This year's novel will be vaguely planned SF involving two different species that are closely related enough to produce viable hybrids, with conflicting explanations of their ancestral origins.

Revving my engines already,
F.J. Bergmann