Greetings and salutations, Pinoywrimos! How’s your word count?

Me, don’t ask. November is beating me so bad, but it’s not a lost cause yet! I’m still very zen about it because I’m not counting my words, but wait until I start counting and see me panic. Haha. (Try it — don’t count your words, and you’ll be very relaxed. But keep on writing!)

Anyway, just two announcements for today!

WRITE-INS!
We had a blast at the write-in last weekend — were you there? If you were, then I hope you enjoyed the craziness! We’ll have another one this weekend, and we will announce final details later this week.

BUT, If you can’t go to the write-ins because of geography, but you still want a write-in, we’re encouraging you guys to group together and form your own write-in!

Details can be found on this thread. You can also look for write-ins in your area in that thread. So yay!

WORD WAR WEDNESDAY!
Today is the first Word War Wednesday! If you’re in dire need of a word count boost, a word war may just help you get that boost you need. Word Wars are fun games where wrimos go head to head and write as much as they can in the time span indicated. If you’ve ever played sprints with Timmy the bot in the chat room, it’s kind of like that. We will keep a scorecard of wars for the rest of the month, and whoever gets the most words written during the war will win a prize during the TGIO!

Now since we have squads, we will add another category for the word wars — the squad war. The team with the highest average word count accumulated during all word wars in November will win a prize for the month.

If you’re a member of a squad, you can join both the indvidual and squad war, and have a chance to win at both. But you can also just join the individual word war or just the squad war — just let us know before the war starts. (If you missed our chat room announcement, you can read it here)

More details in this thread! Our first Word War Wednesday will be tonight. Chat starts 9:00pm, first battle at 9:30pm!

Let the battles begin! Happy writing everyone, and see you tonight!

Now that NaNoWriMo has come and gone, it is finally time to party!

Yay it is time for NaNoWriMo Philippines’ Thank Goodness It’s Over! Party! One more time with the details (even if it’s already in the image ):

WHAT: NaNoWriMo Philippines TGIO Party
WHEN: December 10, 2011, 4:00-7:00pm
WHERE: Libreria Cubao X (map here! Or here, if you don’t have access to Facebook)
RSVP: Facebook / Thread

BUT WHAT IF I DIDN’T REACH 50,000 WORDS?

It’s okay! Whatever your word count is as of 11:59:59PM November 30, we want you to be at the TGIO Party. Remember: this party is to celebrate YOU and the amazing feat you did — not only for those who reached 50,000 words, but especially to those who tried writing a novel this month.

WHAT TO EXPECT AT THE PARTY?

1. There will be speakers from the local publishing scene.
2. There will be raffles (pretty notebooks)
3. If you haven’t gotten your sticker yet, you will get them here. And you can also get more stickers if you already have one.
4. There will be awards.
5. You will meet other Pinoywrimos. (Best part, really)

AND SOME OTHER THINGS:

* If you have some writer-friendly prizes you want to donate for the raffle (ex: pens, notebooks), feel free to bring them! If you plan on donating books as prizes, please wrap them up in something pretty so we know it’s a donation, especially since we’re in a bookstore and we don’t want to confuse the things we have as prizes for books they’re selling. Please let me or Liana know about it so we can keep track of them (and thank you properly after).

* We’ll be serving some bookstore friendly snacks (you know, food that is good to be around books), and in the spirit of sharing and Christmas, you’re also welcome to bring food to share! Nothing too messy, please. Also, Libreria serves coffee.

* If you’re interested in reading an excerpt of your novel during the party, send us NaNoMail, quick!

That is all (for now). See you at the TGIO!

I can’t believe the end is upon us now. How fast or slow did November go for you?

Anyway, some quick announcements so I won’t disturb you from all the writing.

Word War Wednesday
November 30, 2011, 9:00am – 11:00am
Chatroom

Yes, you read that right – it’s at 9:00am. We’ll do this for the morning folks, since there are no classes/work tomorrow. If you need a word count boost, just join us during the wars and write away!

However, if you can’t make it at that time, we will be setting up wars to run all day in the chatroom. They are not official so they won’t be counted in the WWW scores, but if you send us your accumulated word count for the duration of all word wars, you may get a token by TGIO.

There’s still time to catch up, so make the most out of these wars!

TGIO Party Survey
Thread: Click!

The TGIO party date has been moved from December 3 to December 10 (Saturday), but we need some info from you first before we can actually send out final details. So please hop on over to this thread and answer the questions and we’ll get back to you on final TGIO details.

And that’s it! If you’ve won already, congratulations! If you’re still lagging behind, DON’T GIVE UP! There’s still time! You can do it! We believe in you!

It’s Day 6 in our side of the world, and if you’re keeping up with the 1667 words per day schedule, you should have 10,002 words by today. I’m 2k short, but I will catch up. Who’s with me?

Anyway, sending out the schedule of events for this week, so we won’t have to spam you with other than pep this week. =D

Makati Write In
November 7, 2011, 1-4pm
Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf, Ayala Triangle
RSVP on Facebook

South people rejoice? We thought of having a write-in in Makati area so the people farther down South of Manila can join us. It’s a holiday tomorrow, so let’s make the most out of writing time, yes? If you happen to have work and you’re in Makati, swing by and say hi.

If you don’t have Facebook, you can also RSVP here.

Word War Wednesday
November 9, 2011, 9:00-11:00pm
http://chat.pinoywrimos.com

We’ll have the next round of official word wars by Wednesday night at the chat room. We managed to write 36,503 words last Friday — how about that! Word war scores are cumulative so the more wars you join, the more chances of you winning as Word Warriors of the year (and getting a word count boost!). You can view the current score sheet here: http://dft.ba/-wordwar2011

11/11/11/ Challenge
November 11, 2011

Don’t you just love dates like that? And it’s a binary date, too! Because of this special date, we will have an 11/11/11 challenge! We’ll make it simple: you just need to write 11,000 words on this day. That’s 11,000 words ON TOP of your word count. It’s not entirely impossible. It’s hard, but it’s doable. We’ll be starting a thread for this one this week, so remember to check the regional forums!

Onward to Week 2 everyone! Let’s get those Plot-octopuses swimming and those Guilt Monkeys at bay, okay?

Howdy Wrimos!

If you were there in the Kick-Off chat, you probably remember how crazy it was right? It was our biggest Kick-Off chat ever, and it was kind of hard to keep track of people! Anyway, as I mentioned, that chat room was just temporary room, and to those of you who have tried to access the tinychat URL, you should have seen the disabled message.

BUT FRET NOT! Our chat room is finally up and working! To those who were with us last year, it’s pretty much the same chat room, but since they did a database refresh, y’all would have to register again. Follow the steps below and you should be golden:

Continue reading →

Hi everyone!

And we’re onto day 2! By today you should have 3,334 words. If you’re well past that number, good for you. If you’re still lagging behind a bit, we have a little over 5 hours left to catch up. I hit today’s quota earlier today, so I should be okay for the rest of the night, but I will still try to write more.

Anyway, some announcements!

Word War Wednesday today is moved to Friday
We are still having official chat room issues, so we today’s word war will be moved to Friday, 9:30 PM. I’ll be shutting down my tinychat account tonight, so to those who are still using it, please be aware that it will be gone later. We will send the official chat room details and how to register for it before the word war.

For the newbies: a word war is a contest where participants we call “warriors” write as many words as they can in a certain amount of time. We add all the number of words written during wars and the top 3 warriors get a prize by TGIO. The official chat room has word war capabilities, that’s why we are waiting for that — that way, Liana and I can also join the fun.

Write-in
November 5, 2011, 3:00-6:00PM
Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf, Gateway Mall
RSVP: click!

We will have our first write-in this Saturday, November 5, 2011, 3:00PM at Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf Gateway Mall. Now, CBTL is a writer-friendly place, but we do not have exclusive rights to the place on Saturday so we may run out of seats. If/when that happens, we’ll figure out a way to get people to sit. But we will ask for your patience, though. We don’t want to be banned in CBTL.

Anyway, write ins are really just a time for us to come together and write, so bring yourself, your favorite writing tool (laptop, notebook, post-its, iPod, whatever else), and join the fun in writing for the next couple of hours or so. We will probably have some face to face word war, and if you need help naming a character or figuring out a plot thing, then you can just ask the writer next to you.

If you can’t attend the write in, don’t worry, we’ll have more in the coming days. If you’re not in Manila, you can still join us in the chat, or you can organize a write-in in your region — just look for a thread for your region in the lounge, or create one if there’s none yet.

And that’s it for today. For the newbies, if you have more questions and do try to go check out the NaNoWriMo FAQ before going around and asking them — chances are, it’s there! There’s a thread with general FAQ links, so you can check it out, top.

Keep on writing!

Mabuhay!

And it’s officially NaNoWriMo 2011 in the Philippines! I’ll keep this short and sweet for now, because I know you guys are going to be busy writing. I just have a quick (and important) tip for you guys today:

Make the most out of the holiday.

Unfortunately, I’ll be on a working holiday today (boo), but even so, I’m going to do my best to get some writing done. But for you guys who are still at home, with the entire day ahead of you, get writing. Get your word count quota in and more, because trust me, you will appreciate this boost for the next days. The more you can write today, the more you will be able to keep the momentum in the next days.

Quit worrying about your title, or your first line. Write whatever comes to mind that is a part of your story. You can go back to writing the first line later. Or you can decide that the first line you wrote today is your real first line. Quit worrying, quit thinking and just write. Like what Mr. Njel de Mesa said during our Kick-Off Party: You need to sit down and write. Because if you don’t, then nothing is going to happen.

And don’t forget: 1667 words per day for the next 30 days. But since today is a holiday, I’d say go double, triple or quadruple the word count today, while you can.

But if you can’t…then don’t worry, we have 29 days to go. Just keep writing~

Watch out for the first pep talk coming out tomorrow! Till then, happy writing and happy National Novel Writing Month 2011!

Well, this site has been way overdue. Hello world, pinoywrimos.com is live again!

National Novel Writing Month 2011 is just around the corner, and we figure we’d need a place where you can get information in case the site goes down (which may happen especially during peak time). This is also where you can find resources and copies of announcements, as well as pep talks in case you miss anything.

So make sure you always check back here for information, especially during November. Don’t worry, we promise not to distract you!

We’re also on Twitter and Facebook, so be sure to follow us there!

Ready for November? I hope so. Onward!!!