PinoyWrimos

Hello Pinoywrimos!

I just got back from my trip to Makati where I met up with 15 other Wrimos to eat pizza and talk, talk and talk! It was such a fun afternoon — good thing we ruled Yellow Cab. :P Thanks to everyone who attended!

Anyway, I’d like to say congratulations to everyone who joined this year’s NaNoWriMo. To the newbies who reached 50k for the first time, to the veterans whose won NaNo for more than a year, to those who have been a part of NaNo for a while but only won this year, and most especially to those who did more than 10k yesterday just to reach the word count goal: CONGRATULATIONS! You proved that 50k in a month is crazy, but doable. :)

If you did not reach 50k, I still congratulate you! The very fact that you joined this year and tried writing is an achievement already. What matters is YOU WROTE, so don’t feel bad that you didn’t reach 50k. That, and I hope to see you guys again next year! This time, we’ll all make sure you reach the word count goal!

To those who missed this afternoon’s event, you can still attend the TGIO party! You don’t have to have reached 50k last month, as long as you participated in NaNoWriMo, you can attend the TGIO Party. It’s going to be on December 12 at Fully Booked U-View at Bonifacio High Street, from 7-9PM. This is your time to talk to fellow Wrimos and people from the industry and win exciting prizes! Remember that wooden journal back in Kick Off Party? That’s up for grabs on the TGIO, so be there to get a chance to win it! Please do sign up here, and if you have any questions, you can email/YM me or just post a question at the TGIO thread. :) Much thanks to Talecraft again for sponsoring the party.

And so here’s a bittersweet feeling. I always have this feeling after November, like the days seem emptier and less…well, exciting. Of course, work’s always waiting for me, so now I must focus on work. I’m resting from writing from December, but I promised myself that i’d pick it up again as 2009 comes. I gotta get serious with this, y’know? :P

So here’s a collective question I can feel from everyone: WHAT NOW?

1. The NaNoWriMo HQ gives us plenty of things to do after on the I Wrote a Novel, Now What? page.
2. I believe the website will be up all year, so we can keep on posting here until they wipe it off before next year’s NaNoWriMo. They’ve also opened some new forums for December, namely:
   - Critiques, Feedback and Novel Swaps
   - Novel Draft Aftercare
   - Life After NaNoWriMo
3. If you’d like a new challenge of writing scripts, you may also join Script Frenzy on April. :)
4. We’ll also be having a 2008 NaNoWriMo Anthology, so watch out for emails about this!
5. If you have any suggestions for activities, or if you know of any writing events that you want to share to the group, please do email me about it so I can send it to the groups and post it on the website. :)

We won’t be having the weekend chats anymore, but expect random conference invites every now and then just so we can all talk and update each other about life and such. :) I’d miss you guys too much if I don’t get to see you or talk to you every now and then. :D Who’s up for Laser Tag sometime next year? :D

Anyway, I really should get started on some of my freelance projects that I’ve pushed away this past month. I’m proud of you guys. :) It’s been such an honor.

See you at the TGIO!

P.S. Oh guys, donating to NaNoWriMo is still open — if you guys can donate, please do! This will help NaNoWriMo stay online for the rest of the year. :D You can donate here. If you’re broke, you can still help out here. To find out where your donations go, click here. :D Let’s help keep NaNoWriMo alive!

I know most of you are still pretty busy catching up with your word counts, so I’ll keep this short and sweet. :D

1. Novel verification is working for the past days already, and that’s where the pretty purple bars popping up here and there. To verify your word count and win, go to My NaNoWriMo > Edit Novel Info / Verify and Win. Copy the entire text of your novel, paste it in the box and click submit at the very bottom of the page. If you’re over 50k, your green bar will turn into purple and you’ll be taken to the winner’s page.In case you get a purple bar but haven’t reached 50,000 words yet, you can unwin by going to the My NaNoWriMo > Edit Novel Info and write your actual word count there and you’ll get the blue bar back. In case it doesn’t go back, you can send me NaNoMail so i can report it to the mods, or just contact cybele or Dragonchilde :)
2. Pre-TGIO meet up at December 1, 2:30-5:00pm at Yellow Cab Glorietta. This is a time to just relax and hang out and talk about everything NaNo or not Nano. =) I’ll be putting up the sign up sheet by tomorrow. :) Sign up here!
3. TGIO party on December 12, 7-9PM, U-View, Fully Booked Bonifacio High Street. :) This is sponsored by Talecraft and challenge winners will be awarded by then. :D Sign up sheet will be up by tomorrow as well. Sign up here!
4. Our last Word War will be on Saturday night, 9PM. :) Bonus points galore will be given then, and overall Word Warrior winners will be announced right after that. :D Chat will start 8:30PM. :D

And that’s it! Don’t give up just yet, three days is still a long time, and a lot can still happen. =) Just keep writing!

It’s Day 4, and today is National Back Up Your Novel Day!

We like to celebrate NABUYND at least once a week in November. To take part in the festivities, don a crazy hat, then email your novel-in-progress to your favorite webmail account, save it to a flash drive, or make someone with a photographic memory read the whole thing. Then keep them out of direct sunlight until the next back-up. (Chris Baty)

So don’t forget to back up your novel today! You can email it to yourself, save it in a diskette, flash drive, burn it to a CD/DVD, upload to Google Docs. This will surely save you from lost-novel woes in the middle of the month. :)

At this point you should have 6,668 words in your novel. I can see soaring word counts here and there, and it’s really great to see that. :D If you’re not at that word count yet, fret not, there’s still time! I’m way ahead of my word count, thankfully, but I’m already encountering some roadblocks, but it’s all right. All in novel writing fun. :D

Happy writing!

Who are LiveJournal users out here? I’ve never used LJ to blog about my NaNoWriMo experience, but maybe this year I might. Livejournal is helping out NaNoWriMo by giving them a 10th birthday present:

Not only are they contributing a tricked-out Dell Studio 15 as a grand prize at our November 15th Write-a-thon, but they are also donating $1 to our Young Writers Program for every LiveJournal member who wins NaNoWriMo this year.

[Read full article here]

So if you’re an LJ user and a Wrimo, go to the Livejournal NaNoWriMo community page and tell them your username. This gives us more reason to reach 50,000 words yes? :)

I’ve been a Wrimo for almost five years, and I don’t doubt the magic that this event brings me every year. It’s amusing, really, as half the time in the year, I hardly write at all, save for blog entries. But when November comes in, I suddenly turn all writerly — everything around me is suddenly an idea for a story. I manage to bring my novel into conversations, I drag people who probably couldn’t care less as my plot doctors, and I magically find inspiration in every day which fuels me to write. In a way it makes me feel like I am following my first dream of being a writer, even if God knows how chicken I am to actually have my work up for critique.

But November has its magic, and I find myself looking forward to it every year, even if the manuscripts I produce end up gathering dust in the computer. And I have the awesome people at NaNoWriMo to thank because of that.

Last year, I decided to give back. I started earning some bucks through my blogging early 2007, which made me open up a Paypal account. November came in and I saw how pretty those donor halos looked like on the other usernames in the forums…I saw that they accept Paypal, and I thought, “Why not?” I donated my first $10 to NaNoWriMo, and I became an official Cherished Friend.

It was nice to know I helped somehow, but this year, after being privy to all the juicy NaNoWriMo ML news from Community Liaison Lindsey Grant, I saw a bit of how NaNoWriMo runs from the backend. NaNoWriMo is a free event for almost 100,000 authors worldwide…surely something this big can’t run on minimal costs. Having an IT background has introduced me to the high costs of computer hardware that is needed to run a website that is as large as NaNoWriMo (and don’t forget Script Frenzy and the Young Writers Program). And as an ML, I’ve realized how my pocket can’t really be bottomless…how much more for the people at the HQ who produces tons of goodies for FREE for every region for all Wrimos to have? Not only that, they also help out by building libraries all over the world. Surely Chris Baty can’t be that rich?

This year, I’ve decided to give more.

First off, I’m blogging like crazy on my other blog so I can donate. Not only that, but I’ve also set up a Firstgiving page and I am currently trying to raise $100 separate from the initial amount I will be donating. It’s kind of asking for pledges in a fun run, you know? (And someone has donated $10! Thank you, whoever you are!) I know it’s not much, but hey, it’s still something, and if this donation and fund raising efforts means I get to experience the magic of November for many years to come, I know it’s worth it.

I hope I can encourage you to do the same this year. Last year, a total of 5.42% of all authors donated. This year, on NaNoWriMo’s 10th birthday, regions all over the world are raising funds to get that number raised to 10%. This 10% will help keep the loans paid, and will ensure there is enough funds for NaNoWriMo to be saved in a bank and for it to go on for the years to come. This means, more writers joining, more novels being written and more years of fun.

Let’s help keep NaNoWriMo going and growing! Joining NaNoWriMo is still free, and there will never be any registration fee, but if you can find it in your hearts and pockets to donate, by all means do so! You can also set up your own Firstgiving page and raise funds as you pound your 50,000 word manuscript in November (this is free, by the way :D More details here)! If you’re absolutely broke, you can still help by simply setting your search engine to Good Search and putting “The Office of Letters and Light” on the Who do you Goodsearch for box. Easy, right?

Let’s help keep the NaNoWriMo candle lit, so it can ignite more flames of writing all over the world. (Okay I know that was lame, but you get my drift ;) )

For more details on where donations go to NaNoWriMo, you can check out this page where they give the full breakdown of the 2008 budget.