Fiona Jordan couldn't count the number of times she'd heard fine mist used as a symbol of tranquility by novelists, poets, and other hacks who had never been on a small boat off Newfoundland's Grand Banks in rough weather.

What are everybody else's first lines?

With 30 minutes until the race to the finish starts, I stare off into oblivion. And of course, I mean my computer screen, falling deep into the depths of the interweb.

What will this month bring? I don't know.

But I think it will have superheroes.

Good luck.

More Horses! More Gates!

(Edit - the late addition of Heather Olah - the only American in the contest excepting Dan Kaszor, as far as I know - makes forty-six.)

We've more than doubled last year's participation rate, with a total of forty-six aspiring novelists. Based on normal NaNoWriMo success rates, we should be looking at seven new novels as a result of this month. Based on last year's U of A edition success rate, we should get eight. Based on my absurd expectations, we should get at least forty. Don't let yourselves down!

This year's special welcome goes out to Richard Casey, who brought NaNoWriMo (U of A Edition) to realms having nothing whatever to do with the U of A - specifically England, which the more educated among you will recognize as homeland of the English language. Which only means, of course, that expectations are much higher on Richard and his crew of limeys than on us colonials.

Anyway, there having been sufficient ado in this post already, let's have a look at the participants:

Josh Bazin
Stephen Beckman
Justin Benko
Catrin Berghoff *
Richard Casey
Natalie Climenhaga *
Ian Cole
Matt Costello
David Cournoyer
Bryn Cox
Caitlin Crawshaw
Adam Demaniuk
Ashley Geis
Ryan Heise
Donald Heitzman *
Erik Jacobs
Daniel Kaszor **
Michelle Kelly *
Elliot Kerr
Barrett Klesko
Mike Larocque
Scott Lilwall *
Janet Lo
Thabo Miller
Kim Misutka
Michael Ng
Chris O'Leary *
Heather Olah
Greg Overguard
Shawna Pandya *
Tim Peppin *
Uzma Rajan
Erin Reddekopp
Erran Rilkoff
Ashraf Rushdy
Nadia Rushdy *
Chris Samuel *
Chris Schafenacker
Steph Shantz
Heather Smith **
Michael Smith
Steve Smith **
Krystina Sulatycki
Nicholas Tam *
Jake Troughton **
Iman Verjee

* participated in 2006
** completed novel in 2006

If anybody needs me, I'll be on my laptop.

Advice from the dearly-departed

These are about short stories, but most should be applicable to novels too, I think. Regular novels, that is. NaNoWriMo novels should violate many, if not all, of these rules (in fact, if you don't come to terms with violating #4, you certainly won't finish).

Thanks to 2006 NaNoWriMo near-winner (>40000 words before quitting) Scott Lilwall for the link.

Back in the proverbial saddle
(Note: I have a poor understanding of what constitutes a proverb.)

Time to revive this thing for another year. So far we've more than doubled our participation from last year, as we have forty-five people committed. If NaNoWriMo success rates hold (and we exceeded the average last year), we should have seven completed novels emerge from the month. Woo!

For those of you who haven't got a copy of Chris Baty's book, now would be a good time to review the excerpts I posted last year:

Turning Close Friends into Obligations
The Magna Cartas

Once you've done that, let's have some discussion of people's Magna Cartas in the comments section (of this post, not of the Magna Cartas post - that would be dumb).

Let's simultaneously get it started and retarded in here.