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Other GA Nano'ers

Yesterday I attended the Meet 'n' Greet for NaNo participants in the Athens, GA region. We started out at the Starbuck's across from the main entrance to the UGA campus, but our group grew so large that we realized we needed a bigger venue. A roomful of solemn undergrads buried under textbooks and laptops sighed with collective relief when the decision was made to move our meeting to a building on campus.

I haven't been on a college campus in many years, and I loved being there. The air was crisp and vibrated with energy that comes from young people on a mission to attain their dreams. We wound up in an old building with worn hard wood floors and windows with wavy glass. We took over the main room that was somewhat divided by a unique, two-sided fireplace that jutted out from the center of the wall, its mantle forming a ninety degree angle that pointed to the opposite side of the room. I settled onto the center cushion of a victorian style couch perfumed by time, and two women joined me, one on either side. Others sat on wingbacked chairs and chintz upholsered ottomans, and when there were no more seats the others sat cross-legged on the floor.

I was feeling less nervous by this time, having gotten over the thrill of seeing real live writers in person. Most of our group was university students, but there were five or six people like me with families or careers.

We played some ice breaker games that loosened most of us up, and enjoyed several lively rounds of Apples to Apples. That's when people's creativity really began to show! When someone had "won" with the decided limit of five cards, our ML asked us to look at the cards we still held in our hands and come up with a quick plot based on them. It was fun, funny, and a bit nerve-wracking being on the spot like that

For the rest of the meeting, we talked shop. Those who have done Nano before shared their experiences. We talked about strategies to get going, and keep going. Those of us brave enough (which I was, by this point ) shared our premises or plots for the novels we planned to write. It was great to hear these near-strangers reacting to my ideas, offering me their thoughts on ways to approach the time frame and chapter organization of my project. Too cool!

I'm glad I went, because Nano became more concrete to me, more real, less detached by cyber space. I also met a married couple participating in Nano who live in my city. We may get together at the local coffee house and write!

I met Ben who was talkative like me and very open and generous with his experiences and thoughts. He was saying he wished he could explore flash fiction more and I started talking about Writing.com. No one in my group had found their way here (yet ), so I talked up our community and how great the members are, how generous they are with their feedback and support, and the awesome contests we run. This morning when I logged on, I noticed I had a new comm. recognition point. Turns out, Ben had created started his own port!

Ben is a novelist at heart, and I heard him say he has worked on seventeen novels. I would love for him to feel welcomed here, so anyone so inclined to check out his work will find him here:

Necroben

If any of you have the opportunity to attend a regional Nano Meet 'n' Greet this week, I encourage you to go. I'm more excited now than ever to get started!