T17 and NaNoWriMo

Welcome, everyone, to the beginnings of Term 17! Orientation Part I has been posted and for those of you with older students, IC summer has begun.

All of us on the Admin Team feel that this is a particularly auspicious time to start a new term because, seeing as it’s definitely past midnight as I’m writing this, November has officially begun and that means it’s once again National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo)!

Now, you could go off and try to write a 50,000 word novel. Or instead you could chill with us on the Author Café and attempt RMI’s very own NaNoWriMo challenge. Take on this endeavor and watch your characterization skills develop and your posts lengthen and become more detailed. Side effects might include having your character(s) talking to you incessantly as you try to sleep and generally commenting on your daily life. But it’s totally worth it.

So, what’s this challenge I’m going on about? Read on, daring one!

—    To be eligible, Authors must save their posts in a word processing document that will count their words, and this document must be e-mailed to us (theheads at rmimagic dotcom) at the end of the month to confirm your word count.

—    For each student character you have at RMI, you must write 7,500 words this month to meet our challenge. If you have more than 5 characters, you still only have to write 37,500 words; we'll take pity on you.

—    All posts are eligible for consideration, but please don't spam one board with a gajillion posts just to meet word count. Threads are your friends!

—    By the same token, ORMIs will count towards your word count...but don't be lame and have all of your words come from ORMIs.

—    BUT - caveat - posts done for non-student characters (for example, a younger sibling or parent) will only count for HALF words.

—    Only posts from November 1st to November 30th count.

There you have it! Let the posting begin!

-Robin

Those Magic Changes (Casey)

As you all can probably imagine, running RMI is a time consuming gig. That’s why we try to keep an entire “team” of admins on hand. But recently, we’ve been undermanned. Due to some unfavorable real life circumstances, Ryan is currently on leave from the team and might not be around the site as much as usual. 

All of this has meant that Robin and I have been attempting to run the whole shebang while simultaneously keeping up with college and high school respectively. Add in all of the other commitments and struggles we’ve been facing, and you’ve got two extremely stressed admins.

For this reason, Robin and I have opted to invite another admin to our team. We would like to formally introduce you all to… Sasha! She is the author of Cultural Studies professor Estelle Blair and students Lyubov Kovalchuk, Finn DuBois, Reece Campbell, and Kejan and Kaspar Szyszko.

The decision to ask Sasha to join the team was an easy one. Her characters have become a constant on the site, and she has done remarkably well as a staff member. Not only did she step it up enough last term to earn Staff Member of Term, but this term she has continued to prove her mettle by meeting deadlines again and again, writing with innovation, and supporting the community.

Robin and I are excited to have her with us, and we’re confident she will serve to the great benefit of RMI, this term and beyond.

Cheers,

Casey