The swell folks at Writer House let me know that we can use their space for some post-NaNoWriMo events (no membership required)! Thank you, Writer House!

If you’ve never been, Writer House is a cool little resource center for writers in and around Charlottesville. It’s right off Preston Ave, behind the Bodos Bagels, address 508 Dale Ave. Here’s a google map link!

We’re going to have some write-ins to get our novel writing/editing juices flowing. If you’ve never been to one, a write-in is essentially productive hanging out – a bunch of novel-writers sit together with their notebooks and laptops and write. The peer pressure of a lot of folks in a room NOT procrastinating does wonders! There’s also a kitchen for chatting / snacking, if you need some time to socialize, learn about NaNoWriMo, or talk writers block with other folks going through the same thing.

Come for the whole write-in or just drop in when it’s convenient, here are the event days and times:

Monday, Feb 13th, 6pm-9pm
Wednesday, Feb 22nd, 6pm-9pm
Monday, Feb 27th, 6pm-9pm
Wednesday, March 7th, 6pm-9pm
Monday, March 12th, 6pm-9pm

Hope to see you there!

– Sophia Volpi, aka swiftdust, NaNoWriMo Municial Liaison

PS: April is coming, and with it … Script Frenzy! Keep an eye out for future Script Frenzy event postings! (www.scriptfrenzy.org)

Did you have a nice holiday? A pleasant mid-winter? Are you ready to … finish that novel? Or, if you’re already done, edit it?

We’re preparing to have more write-ins and editing events – if you’re interested, please let us know (via facebook, twitter, or commenting on the blog) and please also let us know whether you have a Writer House membership (so we know if we can meet there)!

Thank you! Keep at at, writers!

– Sophia / swiftdust

Huge congratulations to those that made it to the 50k mark! You’ve done something that lots of people (including people who have done it before!) think is totally crazy. And congratulations to everyone who made it to 40k, 30k, 20k, 10k – these are more words than you likely would have written in the month of November, and that means you kicked November’s butt. Great job!

The last write-in was lots of fun, with many wrimos coming in to finish up their wordcounts and put stickers on the Triumphant Chart of Noveling Progress that hangs on the wall of Writer House. We’ve seen a lot of crazy novel progress this year, including two 50k victories on November 15th (go Nica and Alice!), amazing comebacks after holiday-, sickness-, and Skyrim-related lulls, laptop battery death mid-validation, and a great deluge of winners on November 30th, including one novel that didn’t even get started until November 19th (go Nate!).

Every story has its own story, as you can see. Part of the fun of NaNoWriMo is going on this meta-adventure with other people as they write their novels. It has been a complete pleasure to be involved with Charlottesville’s NaNoWriMo events and celebrations – thanks to everyone who came out in person to Writer House or any of the other intra-community meetups, posted on the forums, tweeted, facebook-liked, or otherwise interacted with other writers during this month of literary awesomeness. You make NaNoWriMo what it is, and it’s awesome because of you.

Let’s celebrate our awesomeness with a TGIO (Thank Goodness It’s Over) Party! Details:

What: TGIO Potluck
Where: Writer House (508 Dale Ave., Charlottesville VA – behind the Preston Ave. Bodos)
When: Saturday, December 10th at 5:30pm
Please bring: A dish of your choosing to share, and a paragraph (approx. half page, single spaced) from your novel to share in our Guess the Novel game. Don’t put your name or the title on the page – just a bit of text from the novel. Then we’ll try to pair novels excerpts with their titles. Character names can be changed if they reveal too much!

Since it’s a potluck, please bring a dish of your choosing to share, if you can! If for some reason (travel, timing, etc) this isn’t possible please do just bring yourself, we would rather have your company without food than miss you completely! We want to hear the story of your story, whether it was 5 words or 50,000 – spouses and other wrimo-supporters are welcome too!

Thanks again for being such a great region, we hope NaNoWriMo has been fun! Stay tuned for future events, and if all else fails, we will see you again on Nov. 1st, 2012, when we get ready to do it all again.

Yours in literary abandon,
Your faithful ML servants,

Sophia Volpi (@ NaNo swiftdust, sophia.volpi@gmail.com)
Louise Ball (@ NaNo loulabellum, loulabellum@gmail.com)

Cville Region: http://nanowrimo.org/en/regions/usa-virginia-charlottesville
Google calendar: http://tiny.cc/cvcal
Twitter: http://twitter.com/CvilleWrimos
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/cvillewrimos
Blog: http://www.writerhouse.org/blogs/nanowrimo/
Flickr (pictures!): http://www.flickr.com/photos/cvillewrimos/

1) A cool purple wordcount bar on the site!

2) Digital winner goodies (web badges, printable certificate of awesomeness, etc)! 

3) The warm and fuzzy feeling of VICTORY!

Go to “My NaNoWriMo” and click “Edit Novel Info”, then click “I am ready to validate my novel”, and paste in your novel! If you have questions / need help, e-mail sophia.volpi@gmail.com (me!) and I’ll send you step by step instructions!

Make sure your time zone is set to EST to prevent problems validating on Nov. 30th!

Check out the 2011 set here! Start here for pictures of the Halfway party, and here for the SLUMPerparty! (To see more images, use the right arrow key or click the image to the right in the photostream.)

The SLUMPerparty was created in 2009 as a way to fight off the nefarious Week 3 Slump that occurs a little after the halfway point every year.

It happens to a lot of wrimos: maybe you haven’t quite made it to 25,000 yet and feel you’re just too far behind to finish, this year. Or maybe you’ve gotten past 25k but, with no end in sight, your progress feels too turtle-like and you wish you’d maybe written that OTHER story instead …

Don’t despair! We are here to help get you through the slump!

At 7pm on Saturday Nov, 19th at Writer House (508 Dale Ave.) wrimos will gather. And write.

All night.

Some people sleep a little (so if you want to be comfy, please bring a sleeping bag/blanket/pillow!), some not at all, but everybody gets some major writing done!

The next morning we’ll leave for the Tavern at 10 for celebratory pancakes.

If you’d like to write but want to retreat back to your own bed – please do!
If you want to skip the party but still want to meet us for pancakes on Sunday morning – please do!

We’ll probably do a pizza order around 7:30pm, so if you’d like to partake please bring two bucks. As far as snacks (aka Writer Fuel) go, we have lots of sweets left over from the potluck that you can partake of free of charge – and we’re well stocked in the coffee (and half & half) and cocoa departments, now, too.

Good luck, writers!

Your MLs,

Sophia (swiftdust – sophia.volpi@gmail.com) and
Louise (loulabellum – loulabellum@gmail.com)

I hope your wordcounts are steadily increasing, remember quantity quantity quantity! It seems like we only just started but amazingly enough we’re almost halfway. We’ll be celebrating with the Halfway Party next Tuesday, 15th November 7-10pm at WriterHouse. Sophia and I thought that it would be fun to make this event a potluck so please bring something to share with your fellow Wrimos! I started a thread on the forum to get an idea of what we’ll have, give as little or as much info as you’d like, it’s okay to write “savoury” or “sweet” then Sophia and I can balance out any potential sugar overloads. There will also be a return of the ever popular Write-Your-Wordcount-On-A-Cupcake this year!

There may be some literary themed games a-happening at the event and as always, writing!

Congratulations to all the letters appearing on the Novelling Chart! If anyone is feeling behind, don’t worry, there’s still 3 weeks to go. Including the Epic Slumperparty where your wordcount will explode, in a good way. I guarantee it.

Our next official event is a write-in TOMORROW (Thursday, November 3rd) from 7pm-9pm at Writer House. See you there, or if we don’t, good luck, fellow Cville wrimos!

– Sophia (nanowrimo.org: swiftdust, email: sophia dot volpi at gmail dot com!)

Seminar, Saturday, January 15, 9am-4pm–  “The Hero and the Quest: Tolkien, Lewis, and Beyond”
Cost: $75 Members | $85 Non-Members | Register Here
What makes a fantasy fantastic? What’s the difference between high and low fantasy, between urban and sword-and-sorcery? What do Tolkien and Lewis have to say and why does it matter now? This one-day seminar examines the core elements and metaphors of fantasy, such the Hero and the Quest, the Villain, Good vs. Evil, magic, Other Worlds, and how familiarity with these helps a writer find his or her own story. The seminar includes discussion, in-class writing, and a short workshop using the in-class work.

Literary Salon, Saturday, January 15, 7pm–”Writing Fantasy, Writing Self: Incorporating the Autobiographical into the Fantastic” Free and open to the public. Elves, dragons, and wizards. Witches and wardrobes and talking lions. At first glance these commonplace elements of fantasy seem to have little or no connection to the world in which the fantasy writer and the fantasy reader live. How does one handle the intersections of the fantastic and the real? Warren Rochelle, the author of The Wild Boy, Harvest of Changelings, and most recently, The Called, the sequel to Harvest, speaks about incorporating the personal and the mundane into his fantasy.turday to teach a writing seminar, followed by a book discussion.

WriterHouse, 508 Dale Ave, 434-296-1922, www.writerhouse.org.