Word war?

DEFINITELY!!

I think the fierce word wars make it SO much more interesting.

As for who we battled last year - wasn't it Chicago?

..... Aaaaaaarrgggh!

Yes ... Chicago. Damn them all.

I think we were counting on them being passed out drunk from Obama's victory. Let's see, BC has 4.4 million people and almost as many caribou, which means we'd have more parity than taking on Chicago. I say go for it!

2003: St Augustine's Chickens (w)
2004: Arcanagencia (w)
2005: The Exile War (w)
2006: The Exile's Return (w)
2007: The March Beyond Progress (w)
2008: The Monarchs of Paradise (w)
2009: Displacement

OMG I LOVE Canada!! I'm in. Battling Canada will be fun :D

Game on, Canada!!!

Go for it - It'd be excellent motivation if we're in a word war we can potentially win :-)

[Though I must say - when skimming the topics list and finding this one, I mistakenly read it as World war!]

I love a fighting spirit! I agree it'll be great motivation for everyone involved :-)

I'll let MysteriousAges know we're up for the challenge.

Now: We need a brave and fearless Captain to lead our way. I think last year we were captained by lurgee, but he doesn't seem to have surfaced yet this year (although I'm 99% sure he's still planning to do NaNoWriMo). Any volunteers to be Captain?

Ruth
Municipal Liaison - Palmerston North, New Zealand
http://phyntosia.blogspot.com

I'm game for a word war. However, I'm not going to volunteer for the captaincy, I've just been elected to two committees in the past week, I think that's enough responsibility for now.

YES VANCOUVER!
Although I wouldn't mock them on the caribou; they've got far more amo (ie. livestock) on our sheep!

But anyway, one of my best online friends lives there *cackles*
=D
So yes I'm all for it!

We weren't THAT far off Chicago last year... well, the 'mere mortals' weren't. which meant most of the gap was because I wasn't as crazy as that one with a word count that was so high I think I blocked it from my mind.

But still... I'll have a go at captaining, unless there's someone who has absolutely nothing to do in their spare time next month or wants it desperately. =)

Silly question but can someone please explain to me what exactly is a word war?

Thanks

Current Sanity: 50%
Running On: Panic
Characters Killed: 1
Dares Points: 10
Inner Editor: Tied up

Although this should be better than chicago, I would personally like to be able to word war somewhere that has a similar situation to most of us, e.g. exams for half of the month for the majority of the participants. Up in the northern hemisphere they chose november because it is a relatively uneventful month (similar to our march) in which to write the novel. This assumption breaks down rapidly for us and we actually have to put in a bit more work to get it done.

On the plus side we have much nicer weather to inspire us. I also have no idea where we could word war instead that doesn't have this disadvantage, maybe we should look for somewhere that had a worse word score than us last year :P.

@Brianna Rose: A Word War is a competition between two or more people or groups to see who can write the most words in a set time frame. You can do it as small as two people writing against each other for five minutes to what this is referring to, which is two regions competing for overall total words over the month of November. last year we did opt ins and charts when warring with Chicago, it was really cool.

@triorph: Well they did say that we had close word counts last year which means that we're probably on somewhat even footing despite the different hemispheres... Life happens no matter what the month is no matter where you are. My March this year was pretty chaotic myself o.o And where's the challenge of beating someone you already beat last year? Onwards and upwards! =)

I will happily second the nomination of Christini as captain!

As for the idea of battling someone in the southern hemisphere in the same sort of situation we are, our Captain could always elect to challenge one of the smaller Aussie regions as well ;)

..... Aaaaaaarrgggh!

Actually, November is not uneventful for students in Canada. Most of the universities start their final exams in the last week of November or the first week of December, so students have to finish assignments and study for exams while trying to write a novel and get in as much partying as they can in November! (Also, I think high school students may have mid-term exams at that time.)

As for inspiration, I prefer writing when it is cold and rainy outside, as it is throughout most of November. I can't do anything outside while the weather is so miserable, so I might as well write! (But I wouldn't object to having some nice weather for writing.)

signed,
your friendly, neighborhood Vancouver spy, scoping out the competition! ;-)

Lay on, Macduff (or Vancouver, BC!) ...and damn'd be him that first cries, 'Hold, enough!' "

In other words, bring it on, dudes!

"The first draft of anything is shit. "
Ernest Hemingway

I'm definitely in :-) And have friends in Canada, so they DO have exams and stuff during november, the situation should be similar. Fun stuff! I didn't do Nano last year so this will be a good way to motivate myself.

I love the idea of a word war as well.. any extra motivation is good :)

I have friends in Canada as well, and in terms of business, I think we're evenly matched. I'd go for captain if I wasn't a NaNoWriMo noob and didn't know what captaincy involves! And does this word war go for the whole month?

I'm in, I don't think I paid too much attention to it last year, mostly 'cause my novel crashed and didn't make it much beyond the 5k mark so I was avoiding the site out of guilt.... But this year I hope to be more motivated and actually finish the thing so go word war!

Exciting! I had a blast word warring against Chicago last year. :-D

"Art is never finished, only abandoned." ~ Leonardo Da Vinci

What kind of question is that? Of course we are ALL up for it!

"A couple of thousand behind us" indeed!

I'm from Canada, but at the same time, I'm from the opposite coast - I'm in with both feet!

See you all on Nov 1st. May you all have enormous word counts.

Nano 2006: "Precautions" - w
SoCNoC 2007: "New Zealand 3037" - w
Nano 2007: "The Holy Book of Janus" - w
SoCNoC 2008: "The Holy Book of Janus" (finish) - w
Nano 2008: "Solutions to Everyday Problems" - w
SoCNoC 2009: "Arrivals and Departures" -w

I'm in! Is there a place where we are supposed to join up and do whatever it is we have to do?

What exactly -do- we have to do, just outwrite them? Will there be a dedicated thread that we can go to so we can see how badly we are thrashing them? Because let's face it...we will! :D

Also, I love Canadians! I have so many of them in my life sometimes I think I am one. Thus I must crush them devastatingly, in order to reclaim my Kiwi-ness! ;)

Oohfantastic! =D I have a soft spot for Canada. It's a nice country. Sociable.

I would volunteer to participate in this, but my exams are likely to be procrastinated enough as it is without throwing word warring into the mix. Ah well.

@Rikku - by virtue of the fact that you are writing in New Zealand, your word count will automatically make you part of the war!!

I'm not sure what the captain does, apart from brandishing the literary equivalent of a sword and shouting things like "To the death!" and "Avast there, me hearties ..."

Oh wait, that's pirates .... :-(

"The first draft of anything is shit. "
Ernest Hemingway

Wow, sounds awesome! There's nothing like "friendly" competition to get those fingers typing XD

Actually, last year the word war we did, you had to sign up to be a member (I think there may have been some kind of limit on how many could join? I don't really remember, though). So we could have 25 Kiwis against 25 Canadians, for example, and see who tops out.

The Canadian word war thread is here: http://www.nanowrimo.org/eng/node/3288887 if you want to go check it out (or harass them with our Kiwi superiority ;)

I think the Captain's role is mostly motivational (and harassing the other side ;) as well as conferring with the other Captain and organising rules, etc.

Ruth
Municipal Liaison - Palmerston North, New Zealand
http://phyntosia.blogspot.com

OK, I see - I've only ever done "Total Word Count for the Region" war stuff - and that was within South Africa last year... well, whichever way we go, count me in. :-)

As of today, the Search feature shows 51 official Kiwi participants and 66 official Vancouver, BC participants. So we're in a good position to totally thrash them ;-)

"The first draft of anything is shit. "
Ernest Hemingway

I think last year there was some degree of sign ups; there was a thread that only NZ people could post in and that got up our funny little graph thing. At the same time we also competed on total word counts for the region and I think someone calculated average word counts as well. Chances are a lot more people from both sides will turn up closer to the end of the month. :)

I don't remember completely but maybe the graph calculated a total wordcount. I think towards the end of the month we were trying to find any calculation process possible to have us somehow beat them.

..... Aaaaaaarrgggh!

lol yes it was around then. I think we were losing even though we were a day ahead or so, which was rather tragic really. Oh well, new year new foe!