Regular readers of my blog, when hearing the words “write-in” are likely to think of campaigns where voters write-in their favorite candidate, such as how Avery Doninger won the election as class secretary at Lewis Mills High School, even though the administration refuses to recognize the results.

For those that don’t know, I’ve decided to attempt to write a novel this month as part of National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo). Yesterday, I had meetings in New York, which afforded me three hours sitting on a train, and a great chance to write. I’ve gotten off to a strong start, but I worry about whether I am starting like the proverbial hare in the story of the tortoise and the hare.

Last night, I went to my first “write-in”. This is a gathering of NaNoWriMo participants. We were supposed to meet at a local eating establishment, but they had had a flood, so we moved to a diner down the road.

There were about fifteen writers there. The organizer handed out various bits of swag. Stickers for laptops about NaNoWriMo, notepads, and an “Official Plot Ninja”. It seems as if the muses of old are getting edged out by a newer generation.

A NaNoWriMo write-in is a gathering to be experienced. A blog entry just doesn’t do it justice. However, I will try to capture some of experience here. Just about everyone had a laptop. Just about every laptop was some sort of beat up PC. There was one Mac there that I saw. There was some weird wiring to get enough power strips to everyone whose batteries would not last the duration of the write-in.

There was a lot of chatter between the writers, and perhaps some of the quotes I overheard provide the best glimpse into the gathering.

Last unicorn fan fic… Text your story on you cell phone… A plant, which she watered with coffee every morning… I dropped Latin for a reason, because I hated it, I dropped History for a reason, because I hated it...If you want instant self-esteem, just go look around MySpace for a little while…

During the write-in, some people experimented with an electric keyboard; very small and portable. You could type your text into the electric keyboard and later upload it into your PC. It had a small screen on which you could only see a couple lines of text.

One person quipped, "At least the blank page is smaller.” In the end, that is what we all confronted at the write-in, the blank page. Fortunately, many of us went away with pages having been filled up. Today, I’ll attend to other issues, but I plan on find an hour or two somewhere in the day where I can make more progress on my novel.

Are you writing a novel this month? If so, tell me about it, here, on the NaNoWriMo site, in a Facebook group, an BlogLog group, or other online communities where NaNoWriMo participants are gathering.