...all but one fell asleep...(did the wrimos make it through the night?)
Each November a challenge is run by a vast number of people that goes under the auspicious title of Nanowrimo (www.nanowrimo.org) which stands for the National Novel Writing Month. The elevator pitch of this is that you write a 50,000 word story during the month of November.
My wife and I, Leigh who is the Shadowcat Company Secretary (her duties are few but her presence is mighty), have been in this competition since the company began. In fact we started the competition in the same year that Matt and I started the business. This year we were joined on the challenge by Matt (who is still struggling through while I dawdle at 70,000 words) and Leigh became the local ML (Municipal Liaison) for our region. As part of that she asked if Shadowcat would sponsor an all-night write-in at the offices where local Nano-ers (Wrimos) could attend. Naturally loving all things community-inspired or based we said yes. So, on the 21st November 2009 we held the all-night (8 p.m. until 8 a.m.) write-in - a veritable write-a-thon.
We took the theme from the San Fransisco group's official write-in of a Film Noir and Shadowcat provided a bevvy of snacks, drinks and the unmissable pizza and off we went. The night was quite a sucess with eight of us in the offices and a few others joining us online for the whole night in the Nano chatroom. our claim to fame is that we beat Newcastle who all but one fell asleep. There was a brief break for a few of us at midnight when we showed the movie Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid starring Steve Martin, a Film Noir pastiche/homage.
By the end of the night, fingers were tired, brains were numb (in point of fact the habitual Zombie jokes started to abound as we called out for Brains), the word counts were impressive and we all struggled home on bended knee - well actually we went for a greasy fry-up at the local Wetherspoons first.
NJP who was online in the chatroom and typing from home on the night
Outofmytree who was online in the chatroom and typing from home on the night
Lots of writers busy as their novels (and pontificating wildly)
Symetrical can stacking
A final tally of scores for the night
If anyone has feedback (and until we have a commenting system) please don't hesitate to email me at: m.keating [at] shadowcat.co.uk, if your comments are useful, fun, or just plain interest to me, or if I think will be useful to others, then I will add them to the end of this post, let me know how you would like to be named (anon, nick etc.).
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Mark Keating is: Managing Director of Shadowcat Systems Limited
Director and Secretary of Enlightened Perl Organisation
Co-Founder/Co-Leader of North-West England Perl Mongers
Work Blog: Mark Keating on Shadowcat
Perlesque Blog: Mark Keating on per.ly
Public Blog: Mark Keating on Vox
LinkedIn Profile: Mark Keating on LinkedIn
My Homepage: Mark Keating's Personal site
