Jonathan

OK, I’ll go first:

Sunday morning
A late breakfast, tea and toast, the paper folded at the cryptic crossword. 22 down, Kathmandu hippie hospital, 9 letters. Michael scratched his head with the pen. Just an average Sunday.
The doorbell rang, startling him. Nobody called on Sunday. Nobody called on any other day for that matter, not since he’d p…[Read more]

Congratulations @elle! You seem to be on a roll 🙂

Hooray, the more the merrier! I’ve sent you both invites and I see you’ve settled in already Squidge 🙂

@squidge that doesn’t make you stupid, I did exactly the same thing the first time I did NaNo 🙂

I was thinking a PM to the setter would be the easiest way, and not putting too much responsibility on a smallish group of people, but we can always try it for a while and see how it goes.

An alternating competitive-non competitive challenge is an option, but how would we decide who set the prompt for the non-competitive months?

Just checked with Steve and apparently an 18 year old is limited to bikes of no more than 125 cc – nippy enough to weave through London traffic, but max speed of ~60mph (and not as nippy as the twist’n’go scooters beloved by street thieves) Once he’s 19 and had has 2 years experience he can go larger.
Happy to answer any other questions on the subject.

Just to prove how stupid I am – did not realise that the camp didn’t let you post anything until the official start of the writing period. But at least I know where to find the thing to log word count – even if it’s not appearing yet.

Can you tell I’ve not done this before? *face plant*

Steve is out – on his BSA B33 – today, I’ll ask him when he returns.

Kate, it also crossed my mind, on first reading, that Alex would’ve referred to his bike by make: ‘his Ducati 500 Hornet’ (or something – I made that up). If you want some better info than I have about modern bikes I can find out, but need to know how old he is – there might be rules about what cc a bike for what age.

Then ‘mate’ worked, don’t fret – the trouble with reading to critique is that one tries too hard and focuses on unnecessaries.

I really like Squidge’s suggestion of a noncompetitive writing prompt.The previous format of having it be a comp to judge was slightly off-putting, for me anyway, because of the burden of that responsibility alone. I don’t have a lot of time to show up and chime in, so the idea of judging a comp was a daunting one for me. Now to show up and…[Read more]

I like this a LOT Kate and defnitely want to read on. One of the intriguing things for me (don’t know if it’s intentional, presume so) is that, despite the ‘mate’ I don’t 100% know what sex the narrator is at this point – either woukd be of interest.

I entirely agree with Bella’s tweaks, the following are my own reactions and are to be ignored…[Read more]

Having never done Nano before, someone’s going to have to tell me how I log my word count, cos I can’t find where on the menu bar I do that. I have found stats… just not how to change them.

Sometimes I really hate technology.

OK, looks like I’m going to be ‘Silver Squidge’ as just Squidge was already taken…

Might join you – I can use it to be Camp NaNoEdMo again – that worked well for me once before.

For me, it’s about getting the time to think about short pieces, full stop. I’ve finally got going again on the novel, so my writing energy’s good, but I can’t commit to something every month on top.

If you wanted to split comp and non-comp, they could run on alternate months – that way, you can choose whether to be competitive or not. And I’ll…[Read more]

Good thought, thanks Libby. I do like the idea of regular writing prompts, but at the moment we seem to be struggling to assemble enough entries for the competition, so whether we could maintain both I don’t know. What’s the general feeling towards non-competitive prompts as well?

I thought this very well written and certainly not slow. However, as the opening to a novel, in view of what you tell us is going to happen, I feel it needs a hook. Perhaps a short chapter before this one, whetting the readers appetite.
Just my opinion, as always, so ignore at will.

Didn’t feel slow at all.

Only bit that jumped out at me was the initial explanation about Bert early on – it felt quite tell-y and a bit out of place where it was. I was caught up in the conversation and Bethany’s dilemma, and it pulled me out of the dialogue.

I wonder if that info would be better moved to when Bethany mentions him later on…[Read more]