Where are you going to be after March?

[gio]

Mars your age is something of a problem as I have the principle not to be in regular communication with people who are not at least half my age and I am a highly principled guy.
Well... thinking about it... I have to confess that as a matter of fact... I didn’t only not register with my real date of birth but also not with my year of birth which is 1982...
So I am 29 year old! Don’t judge my looks from my films. We had a great make up or rather special effects artist who made me look old and ugly. In reality I have to confess that I am this 29 year old handsome Hollywood actor that you like (what’s his name you said?) who aspires to become a scriptwriter and feature filmmaker. (Still I am much senior than you and you shouldn’t show me your tongue like that.)
Anyway I suggest you gather the interested persons’ mails in order to start communicating to set the rules etc. It will be boring such as cleaning up and arranging your desk so I suggest we get through that the sooner in order for the writing to begin.
PS You are not 15... Right? In this school you mentioned you are going to teach not to learn. Right?

[marsbareater12]

-looks-

-blinks blankly- Wait, what?

[gio]

Oh my dear Mars! You ARE 15 years old! Your administrator status made me think that you are much senior in years. I am born in 1964 as my profile says only insteed of March I was born in April 25. I suggest then we don't start any email exchange unless it is in the context of a wider group. Really wish you the best.

[flatiron]

Gio, you are far to old for me to talk to, and I lied about my birthday too, not actually having been born on 1-1. /kidding/

Seriously, when it comes to writing challenges, I've done writing for a long time, including multiple degrees in English, but this month was my first 50k challenge, and so in that way, regardless of ages, I feel that it is I who am the newbie at this. If I were workshopping material, then I'd be inclined to want to engage writers with similar interests in terms of genre and subject matter, but that's mostly not what's been happening here.

I have really enjoyed getting to know folks on this board, and I have found it VERY helpful, on those days when sitting on my backside doing nothing felt far more compelling than re-entering the dream, to see folks posting progress on the word count, and on their personal progress threads. Call it purposefully agreeing to social engineering if you want, but seeing those posts made me feel like, 'oh crikey, I'm falling behind!' and my characters breathed a sigh of relief that I was once again in the saddle, fingers on the keyboard.

So, I am with all of you, in not wanting to lose the thread of continuity here... I'm not sure of the best way to accomplish that. Another board just like this one would do the trick, or Aprilfools (I signed up but haven't gotten in yet). I'm not in for Screnzy, since I'm hoping to finish my current novel, rather than writing a script.

I've challenged a good friend of mine, who also has a partially finished wrimo novel, to 50k words in April, with the last two of them being, "the" and "end," and I hope to point him to wherever the crew here ends up.

I guess the question is whether another board like this one is the best, or jumping into Aprilfools is best. I am actually rooting for the former, since it's been nice to have a smaller group, and to cast out there with my minds eye thinking that somewhere out there, one of you is writing away, fingers flying as your characters decide to do something unexpected.

But, I'm flexible. The main thing is that we keep writing!

[marshmellowmnms]

....

what?

[flatiron]

Is there someplace on Aprilfools where they do something similar to our group wordcount updates? I'm not seeing that...

[marsbareater12]

Flatiron-I don't think they do. I think you just update it under the profile. And smaller board for you? I mean, CraClu is pretty small, at 34 members at the moment (including a few of us here) but we can always set up another one

Gio-yep! 14 and proud of it! (Only reason I'm an admin on this board is because I had to set it up!)

Marshy-

[marshmellowmnms]

Why don't we all just agree to go to Mars' Writing Challenges forum? I mean it's already there and it needs some life to it. (sorry Mars, but it's kinda true, lol)

for those who need the link: writingchallenges.proboards.com/

[butterflywings]

Flatiron- I'm with you 100%!

I'm in this for the challenges, even if I am beginning to fail far too many of them lately. I also love getting to know people so the challenges mean more. More encouragement = more time spent at my computer. Even if I spend some if it procrastinating.

[Louisa]

No, people just prefer wriye to CC or Crazy Club Besides Tina, and well, she's Tina. The others, they say they can't be on so many sites and keep track of them all. Which is sad. I'd love to have more members on CC! Mostly it's me, niccy, and 2 or 3 members a day. If that increased, I'd be really happy! CC is my baby, and is all year round! And we have some different challenges, too!

[Siana Blackwood]

Mar 31, 2011 14:51:18 GMT -5 flatiron said:

I've challenged a good friend of mine, who also has a partially finished wrimo novel, to 50k words in April, with the last two of them being, "the" and "end,"

LOL.

Because in JanNo I had a goal of 75k and the 69,999th and 75,000th words were 'the end'... but they were midway through a sentence.

Mars - I'm going to have a look at your writing challenges forum, because of course I need another place to procrastinate... . No, I really will be there.

[flatiron]

Hey everyone,

It seems we need some help figuring out where to go next. And it seems that if you plan to do a series of wrimos, or edmos, there isn’t one place to go but instead many, and our own attempts to figure out what to do demonstrate how easily that can happen.

We seem to have several possibilities.

- Use the site that someone upthread set up for the next month.
Issue: We need a longer term solution that makes it clear by title what it is (ongoing WriMos)

- Use the existing site that Mars already set up, but add some way to make it work for April too.
Issue: It won’t be clear from the title that this is a wrimo site, and it can be kept for challenges outside of wrimos.

- Use WriYe.
Issue: this is for a year long commitment, and many writers have short attention spans, and need shorter term deadlines, and also the chance to do a wrimo or edmo some months, but not on other months, without feeling that they’ve ‘blown’ a WriYe commitment.

- Use April Fools
Issue: This only covers April.

- Use the Crazy Club:
Issue: this appears to be mainly a challenge site, rather than a WriMo site. As a person looking to do a wrimo in March, it wasn’t at all clear to me that I could do that there, while this board was obviously going to fit the bill.

- Make another board for April
Issue: Again, doesn’t solve the longer term problem.

I think all of these could be used to solve the issue of what to do for the next month. I have some issues with some of them, and none seem to solve the longer term issue of where to go any month you want at month long WriMo.

I don’t know about you, but I’m hooked, in the sense that I’d like to know that there is a place where I can go get a few basic things:
- A place to set a goal
- A place where I can update that goal and see how I’m doing relative to the others on the board, creating that sense of urgency that I talked about above.
- A place where I can post a personal progress thread, and update it with how I’m doing and what is happening in my attempts to keep showing up at the page.
- A place where I can check out how others are doing and offer, and receive, supportive feedback.

Obviously we are not the first ones to face these challenges or express these desires, because it looks like the folks over at NaNo are considering the same thing, though they don’t have anything up yet. See www.wikiwrimo.org/wiki/Camp_NaNoWriMo for a reference to this. If they have the cash to invest, they can surely make some of the updating programmatic, which would be nicer than removing the quote tags, but what Mars set up here works, and we have a bunch of folks who made their goals to demonstrate that. If they do set that up, we can always drop this one.

So, let me suggest that until we have something like that available, maybe we should just go with what works. What do you think?

I have no desire to steal anyone’s thunder, or to be sole administrator of something like this, at all. I’ve managed large systems in a work context, and there is nothing fun about being the recipient of every complaint. ;-)

But, while Australasia sleeps, and the Americas bring in the tail end of March (It’s 9:30 pm on Mar 31 as I write this) I’ve jumped out there and created another Proboard, with this goal in mind, bringing over much of what has been created here, and of course with some additional folks to admin/monitor, it will be feeling like a comfy home in short order…

yearroundwrimos.proboards.com/

So, what do you all think? Is this a viable option?

Ready to jump in?

-Flatiron

[marsbareater12]

Wow, long post, Flatiron! I'm looking now at yearroundwrimos.proboards.com

I'm going to hold off on the forum discussion until I'm able to figure out what's happening with Proboards and Happyboards. I'm not sure if I have to move this forum over to Happyboards or keep it here or...It's just confusing.

LOL Marshy. Yeah, it is

[flatiron]

Okay. For now, I'm starting on another 50k _today_, so I'm going to be tracking at that site. You're an admin on it, so do what you will. ;-)

(BTW, Happyboards is an April 1st prank )

[marsbareater12]

Gathered that from the support forum -headdesk- Seriously, I'm so dumb sometimes!

Ooh really? Nice -nods- I can think of a few things