PA Wrimos Rock

Hello PA :: Elsewhere! I hope your first week of writing went well. I already offed two main characters in the first five hundred words. I’m on a roll.

Events in the area are hopping. We have write ins taking place in Reading, Hazleton, Erie, and many other places. Please keep an eye on the calender for events happening in your area. Write ins will be denoted by ‘WriteIn :: ‘ followed by the area they take place in. I’m hoping to stay on top of everything this year as far as mini-events. If you want help organising a write in, just let me know.

Today’s theme for the blog post will be How to Handle Unruly Characters. Ever had those characters who just won’t get out of your head no matter how much room you give them? There are numerous ways of getting those characters to behave, and I’ve collected a few for you over the course of my travels through Nano.

- Let them go – Just let the character go off and do whatever s/he feels is awesome. It will lead your story into truly interesting places and you will never be short of words. Don’t be afraid of the character if you didn’t plan for her/him. Allow the character to become pivotal to the story if s/he wishes. Sometimes this pushes the MC aside, but that’s all right. There’s always next year.

- Listen to your characters – If your story is lagging, take a look at your characters. Did you force them into something that was out of their persona? Are you perhaps approaching a scene from the wrong point of view? If you’re having a hard time getting through a particular scene, take a step back and look at it. Perhaps all it needs is another view point. And remember, don’t delete anything (move it to another document and save it for later if you have to get rid of something).

- Use the Hammer of Justice – If your characters are still misbehaving, you are allowed to use the Hammer of Justice. This Hammer, when waved threateningly above your characters, will force them to behave. I suggest using it as a last resort.

Any other suggestions? How do you make your characters behave?

Welcome back, Wrimos of the PA :: Elsewhere region! Welcome back to a fantastic month of frantic novelling and caffeine induced hazes. I don’t know about you, but I am panicked. Completely panicked. I forgot about the October board reset until last week when I was lucky enough to check my email. Gah! I have a bit of a plot, but not nearly enough to help me survive this year.

I will being this month with a list of resources for you, if you have not started your story building yet (and, like me, are starting to panic).

Baby Names Resource : This is the master of all baby names sites. I adore it. You can narrow your search by gender, nationality, meaning… You can use this site for all of your character naming needs.

Random Plot Generator: I’ve used this site before to wrassle up some truly random plot points. They give you a protagonist and an antagonist and an interesting scenario to think about.

Of course, there are always the boards and the friendly people therein to support your plotty needs. Stay tuned for more!

As the great Arthur Dent once said, ‘So this is it. We’re all going to write a novel in a month’.

Paraphrased slightly, of course. For those of you familiar with Douglas Adams, his novel Hitchiker’s Guide to the Galaxy clocks in at about 50,000 words. As does the Great Gatsby, and countless other time-honed classics. When you finish your novel, you will be among the likes of these great authors and their tomes of knowledge and wonderfulness.

A few tips and tricks to writing your full count. Contractions are your enemy, do not use them. Also, steer clear of hyphenated words. A hyphen is the quickest way to make six words turn into one, with its power of bringing-things-together-ness. If your character has a title, like sir, or colonel, or captain oblivious, make sure you are abusing that to the fullest. When your characters are angry at each other, or threatening one another, use of the character full, extended name adds a nice, intense touch to the scene. As if the character really means it. “I’m going to pour cheese on your head, Jack” is not nearly as satisfying or terrifying as “I am going to pour cheese on your head, Colonel Jack Long”. Ooh. Scary!

The chats are going very well. Your participation in them is crucial, and you are all making them very enjoyable. Just a note, the Erie region has weekly meet up at the Borders at the Milcreek Mall Plaza (the stand alone store, not the one in the mall). If you’re in Chester County near the Exton/KOP area, we are having a meet-up at the Lion’s Share Diner on Rt 100. Keep an eye on the regional calendar for more information.

The question on everyone’s mind is ‘How is our word war with Philly going?’.

Well, the answer is: Not quite so well. Current reports indicate that we stand behind Philly approximately 3.9mil to 4.4mil words. Ish. But we are catching up to Pittsburgh! We are only behind them by about 500k words. Now, I know everyone loves Philly, and it’s the best city in the world and everyone wishes they lived in Philly, but come on, guys. I know we can beat them! We’re an entire state and they are just an itty-bitty, teeny-tiny city next to New Jersey (yes, I am terrible at trash talking, if you haven’t noticed).

If you’re having trouble with your plot, feel free to hop into our Plot Help Chat on Sundays, from 9pm to 11pm. We round table everyone’s plots, and get ideas going. Sometimes just talking about your plot gets things going. Fresh perspectives and people who will listen work wonders on an ailing story line. Everyone is welcome.

Submit your nanoisms to me so that I can post the best ones on the sidebar of our site. Send an email to me at tresa.cho[at]gmail[dot]com with the subject line: “Look at my Nanoism!” Just make sure you include your nanowrimo.org user name and what county you reside in for locality.

And now my coworkers all think I’m pregnant. Ah the joys of planning for November. The strange looks (why is reading a baby names book so odd?), the awkward questions (how indeed would a dog ring a cash register?), and most importantly, the panicky look that writers start to get as they realise November is now only two weeks (count em, 14 days) away. Whoa. Where’s my paper bag…

Wrimos all over the state are getting set for November. Mini-meetups are happening right in your area, so keep your eyes on the forums! If you are in the Erie part of the state, there is going to be a kick-off party at the Borders in the Millcreek Mall (the stand-alone store, not the one inside the mall) at 1pm. The wrimos there are chomping at the bit to start writing, and their enthusiasm is awesome!

So far there has been no vote on the regional mascot, so at the moment we are going to be known as the PA Rocks. Go here to suggest a more impressive mascot, though I am rather fond of the rock. It is solid and strong, unwavering in the face of compressive forces. Rocks can be many things, and boring is not one of them.

Hopefully everything is going well with your novel planning. Look for the email from your wonderful MLs detailing how we’re going to work November with such a large state to cover. Ciao for now!

Where has the month gone!? It’s already October 10, which means that there are only 21 days until the start of November. Don’t let Halloween sneak up on you! It seduces you with candy and chocolate and before you know it, midnight has rolled around and it’s NOVEMBER.

Protect yourselves.

My name is Tresa Cho and I, along with the lovely Nellie, am your Municipal Liaison this November. Because of the far-reaching nature of our state, I will be hosting events online for those of you who can’t make it out to your neighbourhood write-ins. This will include a kick-off chat session, a crunch time writing sprint on November 30th, and at least four open chats during the week. Times and days are to be determined, but I am leaning towards Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday, and Sunday evenings. The times and URLs for chats will apear in the regional calendar when it gets closer to November, depending on how many people can make which days/times.

So much for the boring stuff! Now onto the interesting things. Nanowrimo.org is off to a brilliant start, with only minor issues in the forum reset as I’m sure you all were immediately aware of. I have posted a poll concerning what we should choose as our regional mascot. Whatever we pick, I promise to draw a smashing picture of it and use it on our website, so go forth and offer ideas or I will draw a rock. Don’t think I won’t!

I suppose now would be an oppurtune moment to speak to those of you who are having second thoughts. Perhaps this is your first time attempting Nanowrimo. Let me allay some of your fears. No, we are not all crazy. Just a few of us. And yes, some of us do get sleep during November. I’d wager about 10% of the participants actually manage to get a good night’s sleep once a week. And no, we are not all addicted to caffeine. We just bleed the stuff. I will direct you to my newbie guide, and if any of you other veterans have something you’ve written up that you’d like to share, just drop me a line and I’ll put it up.

Good luck and see ya around!