WriMo Ireland

This post replaces one I wrote the other day which was almost immediately made obsolete by me picking an entirely different chat setup after all.

I’ve done some general tidying up around the site in preparation for November – specifically, we have a new chat room. Unlike the old one, this one doesn’t run on IRC; it also requires registration which is done through the provider Parachat – unfortunately, I wasn’t able to link it into our own users database so you’d only need to log in once (there is a way to do it, I just don’t have the coding skills – anyone want to help?).

The purpose of our chat room is to provide some instant interaction during NaNoWriMo (and outside), particularly for those people who don’t go to face-to-face meetings for whatever reason. One thing I’ve found we do a lot of in the chat room is have word-wars – one person sets the popup word sprint timer (to 10 minutes, for example), announces the start of the sprint, and everyone writes like mad until those 10 minutes are up. I personally find that a few of those will help me reach my daily target of 1,667 words without too much pain!
(I’ve added a link to the timer to the left-hand sidebar.)

I’ll be in the chat room most evenings when I’m not otherwise occupied – hope to see you there!

Historically, there have been two NaNoWriMo regions for Ireland: Dublin and Elsewhere.

But this year, HQ has decided that any geographical area with a municipal liaison should be a region in its own right, so Ireland:Northwest (covering Leitrim, Donegal, Sligo, Roscommon and West Cavan) and Northern Ireland have been added to the list.

If you think you belong in one of those regions, then please subscribe to it (or even both) and set your home region as appropriate. You can stay subscribed to Elsewhere still, of course!

Anyway, this change leaves the Elsewhere region without an ML to look after it (though its ex-MLs, Onyva/Cavantucky and me (Farfalla) will still be keeping an eye out) – but it also leaves plenty of scope for other bits of Ireland to become regions in their own right. So if anyone wants to volunteer to be an ML, please do! It’s a lot of fun and doesn’t have to be hard work. And it can definitely help your own word count.

……….

November is getting closer though – anyone got their plot already decided?

National Novel Writing Month is over for another year, and I’m personally feeling a bit bereft already. I really enjoyed this year, probably the most of all the years I’ve done it – there was a great community spirit on the forums, in the chat room, in emails and face-to-face, and I really feel like I’ve achieved something good this year and have inspiration coming out of my ears.

But what the dickens am I going to do with myself, now I don’t have that goal to reach?

Well, I’m going to set myself another goal, of course – that of finishing the novel I started last month. Who’s with me?