Region/Europe/Scotland/Isle of Skye

Europe::Scotland::Isle of Skye was a NaNoWriMo region. It was removed in 2012. 
The Isle of Skye region was featured in a NaNo Q&A in 2008.
Q: Anastasia, you are ML for one of the more remote NaNoWriMo regions. How does where you live affect how you write? What is most challenging about the location?
A: My daughter says I'm living "on the edge of the middle of nowhere." But it doesn't seem that remote to me. I've been here for over five years. Living on the Isle of Skye is interesting for a lot of reasons. It is a beautiful, and restful kind of place with lots of interesting things around to get your curiosity going.
There ruins of a Viking village somewhere up in the hills. Several castles in various states of repair. An Iron Age Broch and even fossils just up the beach. There is an interesting mix of language, as many of the older folks and not a few of the young ones speak Scots Gaelic. I've not managed to get the hang of that, but it is interesting to listen to. The sheep outnumber the people and will eat your garden flat if you forget to shut the gate, but the people are great.
I find it to be a really good place to write. Especially in November. The weather isn't nice enough for kayaking. It gets dark by 4 PM, so there is lots of time to write. In many ways I think it is easier because I don't have the same kinds of the distractions that folks have in cities. We only get one movie a weekend in Portree, the nearest town. It is three hours drive to the nearest mall in Inverness and since the antenna blew away in a gale a couple years ago, I don't get a TV signal.
Aside from the lights going off in a storm, the biggest challenge is being far away from most of the folks I ML for. I'm also taking care of folks in the Scotland Elsewhere region. Most of them are a good distance away. I've managed to meet up with a few from the Inverness area a few times. I'd love to be able to get to more places, but doing a lot of driving tends to cut badly into writing time.
Last year was my first time at being an ML. I was one of two people for the entire country. That was hard, because I couldn't organize meet ups with folks, because I was too far away to know the local areas. I did do a very long weekend trip meeting a bunch of folks at self-organized TGIO parties all across the country. It was great fun and my first real chance to get together with other Wrimos.
I think getting together with other people doing the same thing not only makes the whole challenge easier, but lots more fun. This year we had more folks volunteer to ML for different regions and people have much better local support. All the other MLs in Scotland are brilliant and dedicated folks that care a great deal about doing NaNoWriMo. I'm proud to be a small part of such a group.
I worked really hard this year to get people on Skye interested. I even was on the local radio station one evening for a couple of hours. That was an interesting new experience. Folks out here seem a bit more reluctant to meet up for this. But I'm hoping that, given a little more time, I'll get them convinced. The young people seem to be the most amazing group out here willing to give this a go. It is great to inspire folks to try something new.
==Municipal Liaisons==
===Past===
unknown
Category:Scotland regions
Category:Former regions