Photo Credit: MyDigitalSLR (Flickr.com) Used under CCL
Hey everyone!
Sean and Anthony, your friendly neighborhood Southern Illinois National Novel Writing Month Municipal Liaisons, here hoping that you’ve crossed that 10,000 word mark… and if you haven’t, don’t fret, because we’re here to help keep you motivated and on track!
We’ve got plenty planned for the next few weeks to keep those fingers flying across your keyboards, and we hope that you’ll be able to attend some write-ins if you haven’t already. I know we had close to 20 people at our Saturday write-in and 15 at our Carbondale Kick-off, and we’ve had many more attend our sessions during the week. Our tried-and-true writing sprints have helped many Wrimos to get caught up and ahead, and we’ve even got one Wrimo who’s participated for the last 5 years without breaking 10,000 words who’s now on her sixth attempt and not only over the 10,000 word barrier, but still going strong. That’s what we like to see!
Of course, not everyone can make it to the write-ins, and we get that. So, we’ve got plenty of online resources for you as well!
- A Twitter feed (http://goo.gl/odXjQ)
- A Facebook group (http://goo.gl/ZiVaQ)
- A Flickr photostream (http://goo.gl/LeB3S)
- A Google+ Conversation (http://goo.gl/cNn5d)
- And, of course, the official NaNoWriMo forums for our region! (http://goo.gl/KhDdG)
We’ve also got a calendar with all of our November events set up (http://goo.gl/9N9k) and an email mailing list you can sign up for (http://goo.gl/KhxYM).
One thing we’ve had on our official forums has been a haiku contest about NaNoWriMo. We were quite impressed with the entries we received, and we’ve selected three that really capture the full range of what NaNoWriMo is.
Here’s our “Ponderous Question” award, for a haiku by StephenPate Chaos:
Just how many times
will Sean Jordan be killed off
in this fall’s writing?
Here’s our “Mysterious Metaphor” award, for a haiku by 1WomanWordsmith:
Swift lines in winter
Ice veins harden honed word-ore:
NaNoWriMo gold
And finally, here’s our “Painful Reminder” award, for a haiku by DublinJ:
Every year the same,
This one will be different.
My hands need some ice.
Great work, guys, and to all of the rest of you as well who submitted haikus! Our three winners will each receive their choice of a NaNoWriMo tattoo or bumper sticker AND a free beverage or pastry from Sean, to be redeemed at a future write-in event!
Speaking of which, we’ve got plenty of write-ins running this week. Our schedule for Week 2 is below. But before we get to that, we’re each going to offer a few words of advice to help you keep those word counts up (but which won’t, sadly, count towards our own word counts):
————————————————————————————–
SEAN’S SOAPBOX
————————————————————————————–
I broke the “e” key on my keyboard. And it’s giving me fits.
The problem is that I can put it back on, but it will pop off anytime I get going too fast. We’ll be having a writing sprint and then, “pop!” The key goes off into the air, and I’m faced with either taking the time to put it back on or trying to write words without the letter “e” in them…
…which is not all that much fun (as you might know) for it is a common part of most words.
(Just writing that last half a sentence with no “e” was tough enough!)
Fortunately, keyboards can be fixed and laptops can be replaced, so it’s not a big deal. But it, along with life, has slowed this year’s novel down, and I’m barely holding my own. So when I say “hang in there, and keep writing!”, just remember that if the guy with the broken “e” key can still muster 1,667 words a day (or 2,500, if I make my insane goal of 75,000 words this year), you can too!
————————————————————————————–
MUMBLINGS, MURMURINGS AND RAMBLINGS, by Anthony
————————————————————————————–
NaNoWriMo week one is drawing to a close. It is great to see so many participants in our region who are keeping up with the overall daily goals. The month is going to leave us with far more than a 50k word novel. Hopefully you are building good practices and accumulating good experiences that can be applied to other aspects of life as well. Yesterday I loosely polled my G+ circle about what the biggest obstacles to overcome had been this week. Popular answers included: Sleep, family, work, children, lack of focus/direction.
How do you achieve at anything in life? It is to practice everyday. The same goes for writing, something many authors will attest to. A good habit is to find a time of day where writing works for you. Morning people may wake up just a bit early to pen some words before the family gets up, while creatures of the night might forgo bed just a little longer to wrap up the day with some bedroom writing.
Even professional authors were once like you and me, people having to find time to write between family and work obligations. They’ve done it and we can to! Stephen King gives the advice to “write with the door closed”. Although he didn’t mean it this way, I give the same advice to people, especially mothers, struggling with family interference: write with the BATHROOM door closed. Seriously. If that is the only place you can be alone to concentrate, keep a notebook in there. (Note: For safety’s sake, I do not advise a laptop in the bathtub.)
NaNoWriMo encourages us to get creative, not just with our novels, but with our time management. While we have spoken about important things like work and family, we may examine ourselves to see if non-essential activities are cluttering our lives. Perhaps during this month you’ll figure out just how much time you normally devote to consumer entertainment such as video games, browsing Facebook, or watching television. Refocusing a portion of that time toward timed writing sprints can help you turn potentially wasted time to productive writing time. On average we see that a focused, fifteen minute writing sprint will generate between 400 to 500 words. Look for places in your life where you can steal away just fifteen minutes to devote to writing.
One of our Southern Illinois regional participants was tempted to set this year out because of a very heavy school load. However she decided to use this fifteen-minute word sprint approach and is doing remarkably well at keeping pace. Imagine the sense of accomplishment at looking back and seeing that even during one of your busiest months you were still able to complete the NaNoWriMo challenge. It is definitely something to remember when facing future challenges in life!
The habit of finding the time to write every day, even for a few minutes, is a wonderful thing to cultivate and carry forward past November. Even when you are not writing a novel, daily writing can enhance our communication skills, clear our minds, sharpen our attention, heighten our problem solving, and find ourselves amid the hustle and bustle of our daily lives. This is something that NaNoWriMo reminds me of each year!
Best wishes for overcoming life’s hurdles as we race into week #2!
————————————————————————————–
THIS WEEK’S EVENTS
————————————————————————————–
Please attend one of our write-ins! You’ll find that we’re a friendly bunch, and you’ll also find that those who attend write-ins are much more likely to finish their novels. Plus, we’ll be handing out some NaNoWriMo goodies at some of our write-ins, like fake tattoos and bumper stickers!
TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 8
————————————–
6:30 – 8:30 PM: Write-in at Starbucks in Collinsville (HOST: Anthony “falseramona”)
7:00 – 9:00 PM: Write-in at Italian Village in Carbondale (HOST: Dave “hexgnome13″)
WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 9
————————————–
6:30 – 9:30 PM: Write-in at Denny’s in Glen Carbon (HOST: Eville Writers)
THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 10
————————————–
6:30 – 8:30 PM: Write-in at St. Louis Bread Company in Collinsville (HOST: Sean “SeanJJordan”)
SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 12
————————————–
10:00 AM – 2:00 PM: Write-in at Caffe Avanti (HOST: Anthony “Falseramona”)
If you are hosting a write-in and would like to get it on the calendar, please email seanATseanjjordanDOTcom and Sean will put it up for you!
————————————————————————————–
DENOUEMENT
————————————————————————————–
As always, you can find out more about our events on our calendar at http://goo.gl/9N9k
And don’t forget to check out our blog at http://soilnanowrimo.wordpress.com
We’d also love to see you on our forums! You can visit them by going to http://goo.gl/KhDdG
Good luck with your remaining NaNoWriMoing, and let us know if we can be of any assistance to you!
-Sean Jordan and Anthony Mathenia
Your friendly neighborhood Municipal Liaisons (MLs)
0 Responses to “[USA::Illinois::Southern] NaNoWriMo 2011 Newsletter Week 1: 10,000 Reasons I Already Hate My Novel!”