Has anyone here used or heard much about contract review services by any of the writers organizations - National Writers Union or the bigger ones? In the absence of an agent would they be a good place to get a contract reviewed.

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Such a product isn't going to provide a living, quit-your-job salary—not necessarily, or right away. But the benefits include near-immediate gratification and personal investment in the book as a business entity, both things that traditional publishing alienates authors from.

There's a NaNoWriMo group in my area, and they're going to be meeting at the game store Hubby used to manage for their kickoff meeting. I'd kind of like to go, but for some reason I'm leery of meeting people who might come to know where I live (so very odd of me, who has been thinking I need to meet more meat people), plus I'm thinking of using NaNoWriMo to kickstart finishing Career Advancement, not original fic. So I'm leery of bringing that POV into a writing group that is geared towards producing a novel.

Has anyone done the NaNoWriMo in person?

No, but I'm kind of a bitch about rah-rah, joiner things. And people who have, like, writing sweatshirts and special creative pens. I need a NanoWriMo of Larry David wannabes, and around here? Not so much.

I just snorted tea out my nose.

I'm hoping they'll be at least a little cool, because they're meeting at Hubby's old store, ie, a game store is a comfortable environment to them, as opposed to a meeting room at BYU (which is another NaNo group). I can at least go meet them and see. Interacting with three-dimensional people is supposed to be good. I'm half expecting to know a bunch of them anyway.

Hey NaNoWriMo. I've been tumbling an idea around in my head for months. Maybe I can give it a kick start. I did it once before but only participated on line.

Well, my story 'Sarah' got second place in its little contest (8 entries on a fairly small website). The first place story just got sold to a magazine that pays pro rates so I don't feel bad coming in second. Now to edit 'Sarah' and figure out this whole short story submission process.

My novel is moving along too. I'm about a quarter of the way though my next to last revision. The last one will just be about hunting down grammar errors and too-weak sentences so hopefully it won't take really long. It's not like I'm not trying to weed them out this time as well.

Thanks, all. Sometimes I feel like such a bitch being snarky about the NaNoWriMo ethos. Because if there is one thing I would tell high-school me, it is "if somebody's having fun and not hurting people they don't need you to rank on it." But then I go down to the site and it's all "First paragraph...group hug!1" and I wonder why I thought it would be different this time.

Every year I contemplate doing NaNoWriMo, and every year I chicken out. I've always written well in terms of essays and assignments where I have a clear topic assigned, but I've never been one to be able to come up with plots and characters. I frequently wish that we still had one of our old computers lying around; I know I wrote a 100 or so page story when I was in high school that I thought was brilliant at the time, and now I couldn't even tell you what it was about. I think there was a castle.