First sentence

"In retrospect, the wax statues should have been a tip-off: perfect likenesses of British Prime Ministers William Pitt the younger, Sir Robert Peel, and Benjamin Disraeli, and original Kinks drummer Michael Charles Avory."

So begins my opus, The Unparalleled Exploits of Larynx Carboxyl, P.I. I've got a good feeling about this one.

Pre-contest titters and jitters

Attempt #4. Wow. I am really dumb.

As with all other years, I will be attempting the contest with a pretty severe handicap: a full-time job. May is going to be an especially difficult month; I anticipate working 60 hours per week on average. I almost didn't enter the contest until I remembered that 1) I couldn't stay away last year, even after eight days had gone by and 2) Working Title took exactly 24 hours and 30 minutes to write. So if you subtract my working hours, that leaves me 108 hours per week during which I could be writing. Sounds pretty easy, right? Hell, I might just write 4 novels next week...

So taking a look down the list of participants, I predict only two finishers this year: Myself, and Scott Lilwall. I have serious doubts about the rest of you. Hopefully, you can use that to your advantage.

If only there were some metaphor about horses and gates that were apt here

The bad news is that we have only sixteen participants this year, a new low (and marking the third straight year of declining participation). On the upside, it's a really stellar field: the sixteen of us have a combined forty-five previous NaNoWriMo U of A attempts, including thirteen previous successes. Seven of us have won at least once before, and I'm expecting at least two new winners this year. Most importantly,* I expect that we'll all have a lot of fun.

Without further ado, this year's participants:

Justin Benko (Loser: 2007, 2008, 2009)
Catrin Berghoff (Loser: 2006, 2007)
Sarah Bidanjiri (Loser: 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009)
Courtney Burr (Loser: 2008, 2009)
Richard Casey (Winner: 2009. Loser: 2007)
Adam Demaniuk (Winner: 2007, 2008, 2009)
Ashley Geis (Loser: 2007, 2008)
Jenna Greig (Winner: 2007)
Amanda Henry (Winner: 2007, 2009. Loser: 2008)
Dan Kaszor (Winner: 2006. Loser: 2007, 2008, 2009)
Sarah Eve Kelly (while I'm not aware that she's ever participated in any kind of NaNoWriMo, she is an agented novellist, making her vastly overqualified for this endeavor)
Scott Lilwall (Winner: 2007, 2008, 2009. Loser: 2006. Has also won some non-U of A NaNoWriMos)
Erin Reddekopp (Loser: 2007, 2008)
Nadia Rushdy (Loser: 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009)
Steph Shantz (Loser: 2007, 2008, 2009)
Brenda Smith (No prior NaNoWriMo experience)
Heather Smith (Winner: 2006. Loser: 2007, 2008, 2009)
Steve Smith (Winner: 2006, 2009. Loser: 2007, 2008)
Krystina Sulatycki (Winner: 2009. Loser: 2007, 2008)
Jake Troughton (Winner: 2006, 2009. Loser: 2007)

* This is not actually the most important thing; completing novels is.

Update: Heather's in this year, too, meaning that we now have seventeen participants, of whom eight have succeeded in past attempts.

Update #2: My mother has just signed on for her first NaNoWriMo, which brings us to eighteen.

Update #3: Amanda Henry brings us up to nineteen, including nine past winners.

Update #4: Jenna Greig brings us to twenty, meaning that fully half of this year's participants are past winners. Huzzah!