NaNoWriMo Kickoff Party

November is National Novel Writing Month- or NaNoWriMo, for short. There’s a site that encourages people to meet a writing goal of 50,000 words for that period. Sometimes, that’s what it takes to get started- or to get started again. I signed up last year but after the initial first day excitement, all I accomplished was registering for an account. I figured I’d try again this year.

NaNoWriMo is a big deal for a lot of people. There are a lot of events throughout the month to get together with other participants and write. I decided to check out the Kickoff Party for the Portland region and see what exactly it was about.

The turnout was definitely larger than expected. Close to a hundred people were there. People were encouraged to bring snacks and drinks and a lot of people did. This was more of a social gathering than a write-in.

For the most part, I think people were happy to be with others crazy enough to take up the NaNoWriMo challenge. The main activity was a roundtable meet and greet. Anyone who wanted to was given the opportunity to introduce themselves and share whatever was on their minds. Usually it was about their previous NaNoWriMo experience- or lack thereof- and how many times they had “won”. A lot of people went on to share what they would be writing about, getting very detailed. It also served as a chance to meet possible write-in buddies.

With such a large group, it took longer than planned. There was only time to do that and then trade “plot ninjas”- which were basically prompts we had written on index cards that may help another writer with their story.

I was glad to see a few kids in attendance. I’ve only been telling as many people as I can about NaNoWriMo and their Young Writers Program. As much as I didn’t feel like participating, I'm glad I went. There were a lot of great ideas being shared. It was interesting and got me looking forward to get some writing done.