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December 2007
As I write this, NaNoWriMo 2007 is nearly finished. By the morning of November 30th, nearly 10,000 writers had officially completed the 50,000 word challenge. The 100,000 + writers who signed up to participate this year have logged more than a billion words already, and the total continues to grow. If you missed it this year, I encourage you to look ahead to 2008, when NaNoWriMo marks its tenth anniversary.
I attended the Kick-Off party for NaNoWriMo this year, and I picked up some interesting gaming tie-ins to the writing event. I've written before about the similarities between gaming and writing, but this month I'll report on some real-life tie-ins between the two.
Our "Writer's Packets", given to us at the kick-off party, included numerous printed pages and a small six-sided die. One of the sheets was the "Randomizer Novel Rescue Companion", and was divided into six columns and six rows. Each column represented a particular category of emergency with the novel, and each row was numbered. The boxes within the rows and columns held solutions or ideas of how to deal with the emergency, and you selected which to use by rolling the die and reading the suggestion in the numbered row of your emergency column. Perhaps suggestions such as "Give one of your characters Tourette's Syndrome" for "Word Count Emergency" may not seem like the best idea if, for instance, you're writing religious fiction, but when you think about, the humor potential of a Conservative Baptist Choir Director with Tourette's could be incredible, and just the reactions of the visitors alone would boost word count dramatically.
On a similar track, Sarah Janet's Emergency Plot Matrix offers suggestions based on intersecting problems. For example, if you're suffering from Carpal Tunnel syndrome and you've run out of story with 5000 words to go, the Matrix recommends blackmailing your children to type it for you. If you don't have children, then the Matrix's other suggestion is to use short words as much as possible.
Hmmm . . . maybe Sheryl needs to create tables such as these for Collector Times writers. Quick, easy solutions to monthly column emergencies might help us get our submissions in on time. Then again, we'd probably just procrastinate on rolling the die, too.
Perhaps much more practical and applicable to a wider audience, the kick-off party included a "scavenger hunt" game. Most people think of scavenger hunts as teams running door-to-door through the neighborhood looking for bizarre, off the wall items such as empty thread spools, wads of cat hair, or hundred dollar bills that include prime numbers in the serial number. This scavenger hunt was to promote mingling and getting to know each other, as each attendee was given a sheet divided into squares. Each square contained a particular trait, such as "Writing Science Fiction", or "Won NaNoWriMo before". The game was to try and fill as many squares as possible, while only being able to place a person's name in one of them. For instance, I could have been placed in several of the boxes, as a Sci-Fi writer, a previous winner, etc., but the other participants had to decide which category I was most important for them to fill, and which would be most likely to have other guests that could fill that square.
We found ourselves introducing and speaking with people we might otherwise never have said much to, just because we needed to find SOMEONE who wrote romance. I ended up on a lot of people's sheets as the person who has kids, since a majority of the participants were younger and not yet parents.
This game could easily be adapted to almost any gathering, including large family get-togethers. The number of squares on the sheet and the traits included in them could vary by the size and type of gathering, but the point of the game remains the same - get people out of their chairs and their preferred cliques, and get them mingling with the other guests. The person who turns in the completed scavenger hunt sheet first, or the person who fills in the most squares, gets a prize. Offer your guests a little swag, and watch them scramble to find out a bit more about the other guests. Best of all, this game is easy to set-up, easy to play, and doesn't favor those with the fastest hand-eye coordination. With holiday office parties, family gatherings, New Year's Eve celebrations, etc. looming just ahead, all it takes is a little time on your computer, print enough copies, and make sure to have pens or pencils on hand.
Best of all, it's not likely to give your overly-conservative spinster aunt a bad case of hyper-ventilation, unless, of course, she discovers in the course of the game that Grandma is the one in the family who has dressed up in a chain mail bikini for the Ren Faire or played nude volleyball.
For those of you celebrating holidays in this coming month, I wish you the best and the happiest of times with whatever observances you keep, and for everyone, I hope 2008 brings wonderful things your way.
By the way, I finished Lana's Pack for NaNoWriMo on my birthday, the 22nd, with a total of 55,400 words, and I had a blast writing it. I'm looking forward to next year.
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