Nanowrimo Party and Warnings

Last night was the kick off party for Nano in the Charlotte area. The first thing we did was play the penny game which is an easy way of introducing yourself. You take a penny from a bag, look at the year on it, and when it's your turn, you introduce yourself and tell one story from your life in that year. Mine happened to be the year I dislocated my shoulder while throwing away a bag of garbage. What are the odds I'd get the year 1982 on my penny? *rolling eyes* It made for a good ice breaker, though. After that, how bad can your life be, right?

In all seriousness, though,I was impressed with the teenagers who dragged their parents out to come to this party. It is a relief to me that there are so many young people taking writing seriously, I mean beyond texting. These kids are organized and ready to go. Five of them are in the same creative writing class in school and were the representatives for the group that are doing Nano this year. Apparently it is not a school assignment. They found out about it and formed a club to do it.

Another of the teens is 14 and full of ideas. Her goal is to put 80,000 words down this year because she found out that though 50,000 sounds like a lot of words, it wasn't enough to tell the story she wanted to tell. By the way, she got 50,001 words last year.

Monday starts the month of the hand cramps and brain fog. You'll know a Nano-er by the glazed look in their eyes and the mumbling to themselves about story lines, dialog, and characters. Here are a few rules for your own protection during the month of November while Nano-ers are running around trying to get their stories down.

• Try to be patient if a complete stranger stops you in the grocery store and has a mostly one sided conversation with you about dragons blushing and the common hair color of gnomes.
• If you're buying lotto tickets, stick them in your purse or pocket quickly because a Nano-er is likely to snatch them out of your hand to write down a sudden inspiration.
• If you're in traffic and the car in front of you stops suddenly and you see a frantic search going on inside the car, calmly go around, the person is trying to find some paper and a pen. Honking only makes them lose their train of thought and they become mildly violent because that could have been the perfect ending to the story.
• Don't mess with a Nano-er at 11:30 pm November 30th. They are like bears coming out of hibernation in the spring and will harm anyone who comes between them and their 50,000th word.

So, there you have it, survival tips if you live around Nano people. Just be patient and recognize they've lost their mind for the month and they're not really responsible for what happens. December 1st, you'll have the normal person back again.

Here's a quick update in other news, Em has a tablet that she loves. She's been drawing her cartoon people like crazy. I have a meeting with one of T's teachers and counselor on Monday. It seems like the teacher thinks he can do more than he does and is confused as to why he doesn't push himself to excel. Hmmm, I think it's called a teenage boy.