CvilleWriMos

Don’t forget Daylight Saving time ended last night! The 2pm kickoff is Eastern Standard Time!

Hi, Cville wrimos!

Don’t forget, today at 2pm-5pm at Writer House (508 Dale Avenue, Charlottesville VA) is Cville’s regional KICKOFF! Come on down! We have stickers … and a noveling chart … and Halloween candy. Bring your candy to swap for tastier candies, or just eat mine, please. I have eaten too many Butterfingers for a mere mortal.

Also, do you like twitter? Then tweet your wordcount to CvilleNaNoWriMo!

And let us know how far you got today! Get a head start — you will be grateful for it later!

Today’s prompt involves some people watching…

“Take some time out of your day to people watch. This works especially well in a coffee shop, restaurant, or some other public place where interaction is the norm. Jot down observations about the people around you. Describe a loner, a couple, someone who works in this public area. How do they interact? What’s their body language say about them at this point in time? How does the employee react to those around him?”

2000 words!

In the right margin of the blog you’ll see a listing of upcoming events, and if you click on the “Calendar” tab above, you’ll see the entire calendar, but in case you’re overwhelmed by all the information, here’s a bullet-point rundown of the first week:

• Sunday November 1, 2pm-5pm-KICKOFF-Get to know the other area Wrimos, get stoked, and then get writing! Come prepared to put some words down on paper or disk. WriterHouse does have one iMac available for your use, so bring a USB drive if you don’t have a laptop. We’ll try to get more computers if there is demand.
• Monday November 2, 6-9 pm-Open Hours-Not an official group write-in, but you can come to WriterHouse and use the space if you want. Please check in with the person on duty.
• Tuesday November 3, 10am-2pm- Open Hours (see above)
• Tuesday November 3, 6-9pm–Write-in #1–Crowd Energy spurs us on
• Wednesday November 4, 6-9pm-Open Hours (see above)
• Thursday November 5, 10am-2pm-Open Hours (see above)
• Sunday November 8, 10am-Breakfast at The Tavern-Meet at the restaurant for pancakes, then head over to WriterHouse to get some work done. Or, go home and nap and then come to Open Hours at 2pm.

WHEW! That’s a CRAZY busy week. By Sunday night you should be over 13,000 words. We’ll try to help everybody get there!

Today’s prompt is a poem:

The Esquire, by Philip Levine

The Esquire was part bowling alley, part
nightclub, so when the musicians played
we sat at our tables wondering how
they could go on over the crashing pins,
the men shouting and cursing, the women’s
laughter high and false. Bernie, Tassone,
Williams, and I nursed our drinks, saying
as little as possible while the bass player,
a young Italian kid, Tassone’s cousin,
raised his dark sweat-streaked face heavenward
and hummed as he bowed, his eyes closed up
as though he’d entered another life.
“The Man I Love,” the balding drummer
whispered into the mike, and a woman,
brown-skinned, no less than forty, appeared
from nowhere and began to sing in a voice
roughened by smoke, a voice barely there.
“She could be my sister,” Bernie said.
Blond, pale, Slavic, the favorite son,
he told us, of a Polish nobleman, though his mother
worked nights at Ford Rouge. The singer
held out her long, bare, muscular arms
as though offering the word
more than it ever gave, and she too turned
her face upward, eyes closed, to address
someone not there. In seven hours it would be
Monday morning, a yellow sun would rise
over the great snowy wastes of the parking lots.
I turned and Bernie was crying without sound,
the tears streaming down his long, angular face
shamelessly. “I want to be held,” he said,
“just once I want to be held as a man.”
And you ask what happened later, did
Bernie wait until the place closed down
to offer the singer a ride home, did I
loan him my car, a black four-door Kaiser
on its last legs, did Tassone’s cousin,
severe in his long black overcoat, die
that night from a heroin overdose or was it
another night behind another club,
did Williams go off to Korea
in Truman’s army as he said he would,
did I refuse and wind up in my own hell?
None of that matters now. The sun rose on time
over the great parking lots, empty now
that we’re all too old or too dead to work.

Secondary characters are just as important to have fleshed out as protagonists. That being said, it’s 2am, and one of your NaNo novel secondary characters is craving a sandwich she or he can only get from a particular store (that may or may not be open at that late hour!!).

Annnnnnnnnnnnnnnnd GO. 2000 words!

A simple phrase: These things are dangerous.

2000 words today!

Today’s is another picture prompt. It is entitled “Last warning before the end of the world” and is by user crazy-ivory on flickr.

Still 1500 this week, until Sunday, where we hit our true NaNo goal-pace.

This 1500 word prompt is dedicated to all our fantasy writers out there…

“One morning you look out the window and discovers that a huge castle has appeared overnight. Write what happens next.”

Literary fiction people, don’t let this prompt deter you. We look forward to reading just what you get out of it:
Is the castle a metaphor? Is it a satire for something?

This could go in so many directions!

This prompt came from a prompt generator.

Here it is:

Think of the absolute opposite of your NaNo idea, in every possible way. Now write 1500 words about it.

Ready … go!