National Novel Writing Month 2006

Negative post, grab your garters and skip this if you don't want to see someone bitch.

I've been stepping up to the challenge of writing 50,000 words during November since 2001. I have learned how to use forums to communicate with others as a result, I have learned to stay away from various forums as a result. The Piker Press has evolved as a result, with me as one of the original Filthy Pikers who wrote for it. Good things have happened as a result of NaNoWriMo.

I used to love the NaNo Forums. So many people, so many ideas. Over time, however, I pared my activity down to the perennial Jon Renaut (aka TheTejon) Urinal Cake thread and the Geezer Thread (updated each November by Cheryl the Badass Knitter).

The Urinal Cake thread -- sorry, folks, there is no rational explanation about why a forum thread about urinal cakes could be so entertaining and mind expanding as to become a role-playing game that ranged from a stolen alien spaceship to a medieval castle transported to a Caribbean quasi-island -- is still reasonably entertaining. I cannot say the same for the "Geezer" thread.

God, some of those people are such nincompoops.

The Geezer Thread used to be, in some years past, a place where people actually talked about their work, their effort, and their insights. Now it's a forum for whining about infirmities, for taking up band width about why they will never will make word count, for yapping about how much else they are doing besides writing.

I respect the gentle ground of the NaNoForums. I will not intrude by telling someone who feels compelled to post six separate posts in a row to "Shut the fuck up!" Nor will I myself whine that when I knew I could not complete a NaNoWriMo challenge, I got the hell off the boards and let people who could complete it talk without my cluttering up their run for the roses. (Which would be another way of telling some others to shut up.) I can't even bring myself to find a way to tell someone she's a bossy intruding asshole who only thinks she's a popular poster because her prolific and stultifying posts get answered because the rest of the people on the board are trying to be so polite. (I guess that would be still another way of saying "Shut up".)

Oh, and have I mentioned that when you're struggling to meet word count, having someone yap about having reached 50k words in twelve days is really disheartening? If you can leave the rest of the world behind so early, well, uh... shut up.

2006: The Year of Wishing People Would Just Shut Up

Well, except for the cool people who really have something to say about their writing experiences.

Duh. I guess that would be Pikers.