20th Anniversary Interviews - Part 4: Zany Events

NaNoWriMo happens every year, but apparently sitting around and writing for a month just isn’t enough for some of our participants.

Suffice it to say: All sorts of zany events happen within the scope of NaNoWriMo. Next year, join in on some of them, or start some of your own! It’ll be wild fun, and the literary abandon of NaNoWriMo will never die.

Here are a few of the many stories I heard about the things Wrimos get up to in November:

Anekta Bonacorso shares one experience: “When I used to live in the Bay Area, every Halloween WriMos would meet at a local Denny’s in costume, and the minute the clock hit midnight we would all start our novels together, right there in the Denny’s. I looked forward to it every year. It was the best way to start a novel, in a room full of silly costumes, diner food, and camaraderie.”

Ene talks about how the Great Train Escape in California inspired them to do a similar event in Estonia: “Estonia is way smaller so we couldn’t travel for 12 hours but thought that little is better than nothing. The train we chose was between capital Tallinn and one of the bigger cities Pärnu.”

Another participant on the same trip also shared their recollections of the Estonian Train Escape: “We took the first class seats so that we would have enough room for all of our laptops. The train conductor was quite amused. We did multiple writing sprints and got to know each other. Some of us had never taken this train before so it was interesting to see the scenery as well. I remember talking to someone about my love towards manor houses (as there are so many of them in Estonia).

Once in Pärnu, we found a little cozy cafe. As Pärnu is the summer capital, by November the city is quite empty. It was quite cold on that day.

We thought about going to the famous pizza place for dinner, but it was so full that instead we went to the retro cafe.

The train ride back was a bit more challenging - people were getting tired but they still tried to push the word limit even higher. For some, it was the day with the biggest word count addition.”

Sabrina Zirakzadeh told us about an event that more or less seems to capture the spirit of NaNoWriMo:

It was the second year we’d decided to have a midnight kick-off party, and since my apartment was soundproofed, key entry, centrally located, and spacious, we decided to have it there for the second time. In 2007 we had about 40 writers RSVP and 15 show up, so when we got in 82 RSVP’s, I wasn’t too worried. My co-ML and I prepared our goody bags as usual, complained about what a waste the leftovers would be, got the place set up for the potluck, and waited.

Every single person who RSVP’d showed up. Some had friends in tow. We had over 90 people crammed into my one bedroom apartment.

Q:  I’m trying to picture it and all I can see is absolute chaos. How did you manage to fit everyone in?

A: Absolute chaos is about the right way to put it! I had a decent sized apartment but the bedroom area was totally obliterated by everyone’s bags and jackets (leaving was a challenge) so only the dining and living room areas were useable and it was literally wall-to-wall people. I had actual seats for 10 people, but most of the chairs got turned into laptop or drink/plate stands. There were three of us on the couch, two people squashed into a basket chair, and everyone else was on the floor pretty much right up against each other, with laptops (and a few notebooks, those were the smart people in restrospect!) in their laps ready to go.There was a little bit of room to move around, but it was tricky, you had to keep stepping over people. I think we only managed it because I had a big open floor plan all to myself, not a lot of furniture, and the toilet was only accessible via the bedroom so the door remained unblocked!

Q: Did it get insanely hot in that apartment? Just packed with people, most of them with laptops?

A: Luckily, Halloween in October is usually pretty cold in Colorado, and I had my thermostat on so it didn’t get too hot, but I did have to switch it to air conditioning once we hit about 40 people, and the windows got really fogged up! The biggest problem I think was noise; when everyone was talking, it was really hard to make ourselves and my three pet budgies were going nuts at all the noise so that didn’t help.

Q: Did everyone behave themselves?

A: Thankfully, almost everyone behaved themselves. My co-ML Michelle had been pretty good about keeping a firm hand on troublemakers since I came on, so most of the active members were already aware that we were volunteers doing this on our own time for everyone’s enjoyment and the complainers and people doing Nano just to show off how much better they were than others didn’t tend to come to many events. We did have a couple of people we were worried about because they were pretty demanding leading up to the kick-off, but once they showed up they were perfectly lovely and since none of us could really get to the potluck food to eat it anyway, we didn’t even have complaints about food or drink issues. I’ve rarely had a kick-off go that smoothly, especially one that big, it was amazing!

At about 11:30 I broke out my guitar and sang a song I’d written the previous November, “50,000 Words,” which was a songwriting assignment that I’d ended up writing about NaNoWriMo (there is a video of this exact moment floating around YouTube still!), and it felt so good to hear everyone laugh at the in-jokes and encourage me to keep going when I briefly forgot the words to my own song.

(You can support Sabrina on Amazon, Bandcamp, and Spotify. Proceeds from “50,000 Words” go to NaNoWriMo!)