As the last couple of days of the month go by, it comes time to think about the last events of our NaNoWriMo season here in Vancouver. Specifically, it’s time to RSVP for the TGIO parties!
This year, December 1 falls on Thursday. In order to maximize the number of people who can come to the wrap-up party for our writing marathon, we are having two separate events. We encourage you to try to make it out to one, if at all possible. It’s a great way to wrap up the month, and maybe snag one or two buddies to help you edit the monster you just finished writing over the rest of the year.
The first Thank God It’s Over party will be at Moose’s Down Under, the same location we had our Kickoff. We have several tables reserved from 6 to 9pm, so feel free to come by if you can make it down. Moose’s is within walking distance of Burrard, Granville and Vancouver City Centre SkyTrain Stations on the Expo, Millennium and Canada lines. RSVP for the Thursday, Dec. 1st event in this forum thread.
The second TGIO will be held at the Boston Pizza in New Westminster on Saturday, December 3rd. Our reservation is from 12 noon until 4 pm. If you can come, please RSVP in this thread.
Important: If you wish to attend both events, please RSVP in both threads. We hope to see as many people as possible come out! We always enjoy meeting new participants and seeing familiar faces.
We hope this year has been rewarding, even if you didn’t quite make it to 50,000 words.
Year-Round Writing
Yes, you just wrote an entire novel over this month (or more, if you’re a real overachiever), but now is the perfect time to tell you about our other writing groups, if you’re interested in developing more as a writer, and maybe getting published in the future.
Several of us (especially our New Westminster Wrimos) have a very active year-round writing group, coordinated from our “The Other 11 Months” Facebook group. Membership is open, and usually someone will approve your request to join within hours. There is a (somewhat less frequently updated) Google Group version of TOEM, if you hate the Book of Faces.
We are also very lucky to be the hosting region for a high-calibre professional writing conference: the Surrey International Writer’s Conference, which takes place late October each year. The cost of the conference is rather high, but the conference itself is well-worth the cost. They offer workshops run by New York Times Best Selling authors and literary agents, the opportunity to pitch your polished novel or book to one of the literary agents or publishing house editors present, the chance to have a published author read 3 pages of your work and critique it. . . not to mention all the networking with other aspiring writers you’ll be able to do. A few of our Wrimos have been to this event, and all of them regard it as an extremely valuable experience.
Lastly, our twitter account, come December, will go into a quasi-hibernation mode, now that NaNoWriMo is coming to its end. If anything writer-y in Vancouver and the rest of the Lower Mainland comes to our attention, you can be sure that we’ll retweet it for you.