NaNo tampa fl

I'm sorry of this is the first time you have heard from us, but my co-ML and I would like to welcome you all to the Tampa chapter of NaNoWriMo 2011. We are here to help you have a mad, tempestuous relationship with words. We want your November, and our own as well, to be about discovery and insane creativity. With that in mind, we have a calendar full of write-ins. Please check them out in the regional forum.

We also have a launch party scheduled for 5:30 on November 1st...yes the day you are getting this. I'm sorry about that, but it truly could not be avoided. Please join us tonight, November the 1st, at the Brick House on Dale Mabry at the Interstate. http://brickhousetavernandtap.com/locations/brick-house-tampa/ We will have goodie bags...and stickers!

Finally, we are here to help. Please don't hesitate to ask us for help if you need it.



Now, let's get to writing!







NaNoWriMo Announcement 

Sent at: November 01, 2011 18:57

Subject: Week One: Sweating our way to 1,667... and beyond





Happy November!









Lindsey here, Program Director for NaNoWriMo. If you saw my tweet today, or have looked at my profile page at all, you already know that I haven’t started my 2011 NaNo-novel yet. And from looking at the Twitter replies to my confession, I see that I am not alone.









I’d like to tell you a little story about not starting, starring me. It’ll only take a moment, and I think it will help us all break the seals on our November novels.









Ahem.









For much of my life, I have suffered from a fairly spectacular case of social anxiety, especially whenever I insert myself into a new situation. Excessive sweating, full-body blushing, steamed up glasses, choking on my own saliva... it’s something to behold.









My parents tried everything to ease the stress of the first day of school, recitals, parties, joining the Brownies, and then the soccer team, and later, the yearbook staff. “Just get in there,” they’d say. “No one is going to eat you!”









None of the psychological tricks they tried really worked. And they always made me go and join and do, much as I may have begged or squealed to skip. And cheers to them for holding firm, because I always had a ball.









As an adult, I still have to make myself try new things, though I frequently wish to stay at home alone doing the same old safe stuff. I ease the awkwardness of my shaky introductions and foggy glasses by smiling a lot and taking my glasses off for the first ten minutes of any new adventure.









What I’ve also learned is that once I am through the door, I'm pretty okay. It’s the initial fear of turning the doorknob and crossing the threshold that activates the fear factory. Once that's done, I’m already feeling more relaxed and able to remember why I was doing the new thing in the first place: because it's fun!











So now you know way more than you need to about my temperament and tendency to sweat excessively. But I share this mildly humiliating information with you because I think the beginning of NaNoWriMo feels like this for a lot of people!









Jumping into 50,000 words can carry with it a certain stab of, “Oh, jeez, I don’t know what I am doing or what’s going to happen!” And with that panicky thought comes the inclination to say, “I’ll do it next time, “ or skip it altogether.







But if you wait until next time, if you stay home on the couch with the cat and don’t make yourself go and join and do, you’re going to miss out on a surprising and satisfying month of creative abandon. You’ll be walking away from the rough draft of your novel.









Like I said, I am still at a zero word count. And I am starting to feel those first telltale symptoms when I think about starting my novel tonight: the clammy hands, the dry mouth, the damp underarms. Yep, I am nervous.









But I also know that writing the first paragraph, the first page, and then the first 1,667 words, is akin to walking through the door, introducing myself, and removing my glasses for a little while until the perspiring subsides.









Starting can be daunting. But as one who struggles with this, I can tell you with confidence that no one is going to eat you. In fact, you’re going to have a tremendous amount of fun. But first, you’ve gotta walk into the room.









I invite you to put your hand on that door with me and push. Let’s write this first page together, and then get on with the party that awaits.









Extending my (slightly sweaty) hand to you,







Lindsey







From: NaNoWriMo Announcement 

Sent at: November 04, 2011 20:11

Subject: Week One Pep Talk from Erin Morgenstern





Dear brave, beautiful NaNoWriMo writer,









I feel a bit like I am writing this from the other side of the looking glass. I am more accustomed to being the participant and not the pep talker. Also, “pep” is a strange word. The Online Etymology Dictionary informs me that it dates from 1912 as a shortened form of “pepper” figuratively meaning spirit or energy. (“Pep talk” only dates back to 1926.) It sounds to me more like a soft drink or a nickname for a small dog. Feel free to think of this pep talk as a small dog full of spirit or energy.









I have been where you are. I suspect this might feel like someone yelling encouragement from a far dry shore, sipping a fancy-glassed drink with a little paper umbrella precariously perched atop it, waving with my free hand while you swim through icy, toe-numbing water. But I have been in that water, many times. My toes have been numb during those dismal days when even minimal wordage seems unattainable and that 50K beach is barely visible through the salt-spray surf. There are probably sharks involved in this analogy as well.









(True confession: I love analogies. I also love adverbs. There, I said it. I love adverbs so much I sometimes contemplate getting an –ly tattooed behind my ear to encourage the whispering of sweet, sweet adverbs. But I digress.)









I participated in my first NaNoWriMo in 2003, after years of thinking about writing and not actually putting words down on paper. I managed around 15k before I quit.









I’m not sure why—perhaps I am determined, perhaps I am simply stubborn—but I attempted again the next year and made it to 50k. And again the year after that, and the year after that, and so on and so forth, the most recent being 2009. I have a 6/1 winning record over 7 years. I think my personal best is in the range of 80k in 27 days or something like that. The pride that comes with that winner icon is still a joy. (I particularly liked the Viking-themed year, those were good icons.) And I do so love a progress bar, that gorgeous visual representation of word count progress. I’m a visual person, so that bar helps, it really does.









2010 marked the first NaNoWriMo that I haven’t participated since that first try, and I didn’t have the time mostly because I was in the midst of my final edits for The Night Circus, which began life as a surprise tangent in NaNovel ’05 and was very roughly, sprawlingly drafted during NaNo ’06 & ’07. I am aware that this is cheating. I’m sorry. In my defense, I’m not certain it had enough plot at that point to be considered the same novel.









The circus was my variation on the wise and ancient NaNo wisdom: when in doubt, just add ninjas. I had this plodding, Edward Gorey-esque thing with mysterious figures in fur coats being mysterious and doing very little else. I got tremendously bored with it because nothing was happening so I sent the otherwise boring characters to a circus. And it worked. I ended up tossing that beginning and focusing purely on the circus. An imaginary location I created out of desperation expanded and changed and became its own story over many non-November months of revisions and more revisions and now it is all grown-up and book-shaped and published and bestselling. And it all started with NaNoWriMo.









I like to think of NaNo-ing as excavating. You uncover different things at the 30K mark than you do at 10K. Things that felt like desperate, random nonsense on page 72 (the abandoned broken pocket watch, a partially obscured tattoo, that taxidermied marmot on the mantelpiece) are suddenly important and meaningful on page 187. Everything could hinge on the fate of that marmot. Or the marmot may be a red herring. Or perhaps the marmot is just a marmot. You have to keep writing to find out.









Even if you’re an outliner, leave room for the unexpected things to sneak in. Surprises are half the fun, the spontaneous road trips through tangents and subplots. They might end up being more important than you think. And if they’re not, you can always edit them out after November. No one has to know, so for now, for this glorious November, you can do whatever you please. It’s your world to create and explore and even destroy if you want.









I wish I could think of cool, witty things to say. I want to mix you each the beverages of your choice, cocktails or sodas or tea or foam-topped espresso drinks that all magically maintain perfect drinking temperature. Bring you truffles or tira misu or chocolate-covered popcorn and give you wrist massages while whispering these encouraging, fortune-cookie bits of wisdom-esque whatnot garnered in my years of NaNo-ing:









Never delete anything. If you can’t stand to look at it, change the font to white and keep going.









If possible, get a running start. It gives you flexibility for later in the month when you desperately need to do something, anything that doesn’t involve writing once in a while.









Do something, anything that doesn’t involve writing once in a while. Take a walk, go to a museum, do yoga, paint your toenails, spin around in circles. Shake your brain up so the ideas can move around.









Backup. Frequently. Flash drives are your friends. Also, I hear you can store things on clouds now but I’m not sure how that works. It sounds very whimsical, though, and I am a fan of whimsy.









Take risks. (Microsoft Word wanted to autocorrect that to “Take care.” Clearly, Word does not understand NaNoWriMo. Also, this is why I normally write in Scrivener. Scrivener would never suggest such a thing.)









When in doubt, just add ninjas. (Ninjas do not need to be actual ninjas.) (But they can be.)









Let yourself be surprised.









I wish you happy, daring writing laced with surprises. Have fun. Bonne chance.









Erin Morgenstern







You can learn more about Erin's work here.





NaNoWriMo Announcement 

Sent at: November 08, 2011 17:36

Subject: Week Two: The Secret Sauce





Wrimos, it’s Week Two: a notoriously tricky time in the month-long noveling process.









You’ve committed to your characters and this story you are developing. And you’ve written enough in these seven or so days that, if you’re starting to hate one or the other (or both), it feels too late to turn back.









But I come to you with good—no, great—tidings of noveling joy.









If you’re bored with, annoyed by, sick of, divorced from, totally over, or hurling tomatoes at your characters or plot, there’s no need to turn back, and zero reason to start over.









Erin Morgenstern told us in last week’s pep talk that when she got tired of her NaNo-novel, she sent her characters to the circus. And look where she is now!









This past weekend, my über-prissy main character was making me nuts with her stuffy, uptight behavior and old-fashioned judgements. She was meant to be irrepressibly optimistic; almost annoyingly joyful. Somehow she came out just annoying. I couldn’t bear to spend one more paragraph with her. And that was seriously slowing down my word count.









For the sake of my novel and my sanity these next three weeks, I quickly realized that I needed to let my MC’s freak flag fly. Within sentences, she had cast off her government-issue uniform (and with it, her insufferable inhibitions) and I had her flash-dancing to the Hair soundtrack on LP. Weird, but effective.









That alone hasn’t completely fixed the trajectory of my novel, but it sure helped me hang in there for the next 5,000 words.









If your novel has you down, don’t give up. Get kooky! Add an element (or an apple cart’s worth) of the unexpected and the outlandish to your characters and storyline alike.









We’re here to help with that, too!









This week, you’ll be getting a hefty NaNoVideo dose of Tavia’s world-famous dares. (These always provide helpful fodder for spicing up a soggy storyline.)









Author Jonathan Lethem will also be sharing his approach to keeping it interesting in novel town. (Spoiler alert: He lays down the gauntlet.)









If you're still up for even more ideas, visit the 100% non-boring Young Writers Program Dare Machine. (I just got dared to give my main character a disgusting habit. And I am going to do it! With relish.)









Word is out that the leaders over @NaNoWordSprints are laying down some epic challenges, too.









Before we write one more word of these normal, natural, rational, believable, and therefore dangerously snooze-worthy stories, let’s add some hot sauce!









C’mon, pour it on there.









I dare you.







Lindsey