National Novel Writing Month - Breaking News

Anyone else feel the ground shake?

Chris Baty — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 20:14:53 +0000

I felt the ground move last night here in California. It was not an earthquake. It was the sheer game-changing momentum of thousands of NaNoWriMo participants digging deep within themselves and hitting 30K by bedtime.

Or maybe it actually was an earthquake. I haven't read the news yet.

Regardless, congratulations to those of you who took up the 30K By Bedtime on Wednesday challenge and nailed it. The thought of embarrassing myself in front of you pushed me to spend most of last night at a write-in in Berkeley, where one of our great local MLs, Candace, browbeat me across the 30K goal line.

It wasn't pretty, and I think I permanently husked my eyeballs. But I'm so, so glad to be at 30K. If you're not there yet, please come! You'll love it. But please be sure to blink occasionally while typing.

Our next mission: Let's push on to 40K by bedtime on Monday. I'll be there. You'll be there. We'll be totally caught up. And when we're through doing our 40K happy dance, we can begin icing the champagne together.

Mmm…champagne,

Chris

Word count validator on for testing!

Chris Baty — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 23:45:42 +0000

Hey there Beautiful Word Warriors!

When you go to the Edit Novel Info page under My NaNoWriMo, you'll notice something new. The Word Count validator is on! We wanted to get the validator up and running a little early to give you time to try it out before we turn on the validator's ability to crown NaNoWriMo winners on November 25th.

Until the 25th, you can just paste your novel into the box, and hit submit, and our robots will count it, and then update your word-count for you. The text is then deleted from our system. The word-count our robots come up with will be slightly different than the count from your word-processor (all word-counters use slightly different methods to determine what counts as a word). So test it out now to see if we're adding to your count, or taking away from it.

Anyhoo, from November 25th through November 30th, everyone who pastes a 50,000-and-over manuscript into the validator will become an official NaNoWriMo 2008 winner, and a shower of certificate-y and web-badge-y goodness will result. I'm looking at the certificate right now, and love it so much that I keep wanting to hug it.

Pasting your 50K+ manuscript into the validator between November 25 and November 30 is the only way to become an official NaNoWriMo winner.

I bolded that so you know we mean business.

And remember: You can scramble that beast before pasting it! Instructions are in the text below the word-count validator.

Shooting for a 4K evening tonight,

Chris

Nice things for Week Three

Chris Baty — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 07:47:03 +0000

I'm the final set of proofreading eyeballs on the celebrity pep talk emails before they go out, so I get my pep on a little bit early. I read Janet Fitch's pep talk today (due in your inbox tomorrow), and it really changed my story for the better. Try a character shove! You'll be glad you did. This will make sense tomorrow, I promise.

Thinking about celebrity author pep talks made me remember Neil Gaiman's pep talk from last year, which was so good we would send out again this year if we weren't already so blessed with a bounty of new pep talkers. If you're still stuck in the 20,000s and wondering if you should really keep going, please check it out.

Also, I totally agree with WrimoRadio producer Diane: Your answers to the Question of the Week for this Monday's WrimoRadio are absolutely hilarious.

Making my move in the 30K Before Bedtime on Wednesday Rally,

Chris

Woot!

Chris Baty — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 02:14:03 +0000

The Night of Writing Dangerously was a huge success, and more fun than you can shake a tortellini at. Tavia, Lindsey, and I spent this afternoon at the SomArts center stacking up all the rental tables and chairs and getting a little misty eyed thinking about the great people we met. Folks came to write from as far away as Sydney, Edmonton, and North Carolina. Thanks to our attendees and sponsors, the night ended up raising almost $28,000 for our programs! A special thanks goes out to Tupelo Hassman and all her supporters—Tupelo raised $3,100, and went home with the Grand Prize LiveJournal Dell Studio 15 laptop.

Woot. Really. It was one of the happiest nights of my life.

We're still adding up the number of words written, but we'll figure it out this week. And as soon as things calm down, we'll be sending the total in to the Guinness people. Who will likely ignore it. But it's the spirit that counts. If you took photos, please add them to the NaNoWriMo Flickr pool!

Okay! Back to writing, everyone! And thanks to everyone who has sent me smack-talking NaNomails about my word count. This week, I shall rise again! 30K by Wednesday night, baby!

Blaming the fact that I just called you baby (not to mention all of the exclamation points) on the multiple cans of leftover energy drink I consumed during clean-up,

Chris

ps: Write-a-thon photo courtesy of Emily Bristow!

Happy Halfway Day!

Chris Baty — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 18:39:00 +0000

I just wanted to post a quick note to wish you a great halfway day! By the end of the day today, we should be at 25,000 words. Whatever your word count (and I'm a pretty good ways behind par), write as much as you can this weekend. My personal goal: 30K by bedtime on Wednesday. Get there with me!

I'll be heading off to the Night of Writing Dangerously venue in a little bit to help Tavia and the volunteer crew get everything set up, and I couldn't be more excited (or nervous---I'm giving the dinnertime talk and my stomach already feels like a warren of weasels have taken up residence in it). We'll try to get some photos of the night up on the NaNoWriMo blog during the event.

Also, in the midst of fire evacuation orders, Diane managed to complete the Friday episode of WrimoRadio! What a trooper! I'll be posting it in a few. She and her family are okay---thanks to everyone for the well-wishes!

More soon,

Chris
20,025 words

Why the 20,000s are just like my kitchen

Chris Baty — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 16:07:40 +0000

Has anyone else's kitchen become toxic? Last night, I hit the great NaNoWriMo milestone where I ate spaghetti with a spoon because all my forks were buried under ten pounds of unwashed pots, plates, coffee cups, and the remains of thirteen nights of take-out. Yikes. I'm thinking about just throwing my kitchen away and starting over. Who has time to clean? It's almost Week Three!

To everyone who joined me in the 20K Before Thursday Bedtime Challenge: Well done. Ready for our next mission? Let's do 30K by bedtime on Wednesday the 19th. As I'll discuss in this weekend's pep talk, the 20,000s are the last momentum-sucking slog you'll have to endure this month. Getting through them is tough, but once you do, the Road to Awesome will open up before you.

We're looking for interviewees for two WrimoRadio stories! The first is about companies with a lot of employees taking part in NaNoWriMo. The second is about soldiers who are noveling from war zones. If you belong to either group and would be willing to be interviewed, drop wrimoradio@nanowrimo.org a line!

Happy writing weekends, everyone!

Chris
NaNoWriMo

PS: Speaking of companies with a lot of noveling employees, I wanted to give a shout-out to our prolific staff members Lindsey, Tavia, Sam, Cybele, Drew, and Heather. On top of everything else going on right now, they've kept their word counts up and are on track to win. And don't get me started on our amazing interns, who have been kicking all of our word-count butts since Day One. You guys rock!

Thursday mission?

Chris Baty — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 01:51:27 +0000

High-fives to everyone who read my latest pep talk and joined me in heaving themselves across the 15,000-word mark by bedtime last night. Having that mini-goal helped me a lot. Anyone up for doing it again? Weekday writing can be tough, but I think if we all set our sights on netting 20,000 words by Thursday night before bed we can make it. Who's with me?

Our November 15 Write-a-thon event is officially sold out! Thanks so much to all our attendees who spent the last month fundraising for it. We look forward to thanking you for all your hard work by showering you with food, drink, gifts, and general noveling abandon at the SomArts center this Saturday! LiveJournal just dropped off a ton of great t-shirts for us to give away to all our guests, and we'll also be handing out some vintage 2004 NaNoWriMo t-shirts. It's going to be a great, wordy night!

Speaking of shirts, NaNoWriMo tees are back in stock in most sizes in the store. Replacements for all other sizes are on the way as I type.

Off to close that gap between me and 20K,

Chris
NaNoWriMo

News we could all use

Chris Baty — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 06:48:13 +0000

Need another great reason to keep those sights set on 50K? Our fantastic sponsor CreateSpace, whose sponsorship helped fund NaNoWriMo and the Young Writers Program this year, is offering all NaNoWriMo 2008 winners a free proof copy of your manuscript in paperback book form. They'll even cover basic postage! We'll post details on the Special Offers page and the "I Wrote a Novel, Now What?" page on December 1.

If you have any questions before then please drop the good folks at CreateSpace an email or check out their community boards.

Meanwhile, back in the trenches, I sent out a pep talk tonight challenging everyone in NaNoLand to get to 15,000 words by bedtime on Monday. For those of you who are already booking on towards 25K and 30K, please keep writing fearlessly and know that we'll see you at the finish line. Please also know that I'll be using my site admin status to quietly siphon off your excess words so I can put them in my own progress bar.

Sorry about that.

Bwa ha ha.

Chris
NaNoWriMo

Happy ML Appreciation Day!

Chris Baty — Sat, 08 Nov 2008 19:31:58 +0000

As the second week of NaNoWriMo dawns, I'd like to take a minute to celebrate our wonderful team of 500+ volunteer chapter heads, called Municipal Liaisons.

If you've been to a kick-off party or write-in this year, it was likely organized by a local ML. Municipal Liaisons send out inspiring regional emails, run the regional lounges, and provide year-round, behind-the-scenes help to us here at headquarters. They're the hardest-working volunteers in the noveling universe, and NaNoWriMo wouldn't be the same without their moxie and can-do spirit.

When you take a break from your noveling this weekend, be sure to send your ML some love via NaNoMail, or post a message in your regional lounge.

Thank you so much, MLs! We couldn't do it without you!

Chris
NaNoWriMo

Searching for Author Search?

Lindsey Grant — Sat, 08 Nov 2008 02:00:20 +0000

A lot of you have been wondering, “Hey, where did that Author Search go? How am I supposed to find writing buddies?” This is a great question! No, it wasn’t a trick to get your writing instead of friend-finding (though that would have been a good one!). We want you to have a support system outside of that stuffed rhino that sits on your writing desk.

We really do.

We have disabled the Author Search temporarily while the site has been so heavily trafficked. Believe it or not, that Author Search is a crazy resource-intensive function! Now that the first-week-of-November frenzy has died down a bit, Author Search will return over the weekend. In other exciting news, yet another new server is coming online that will offset the slow-down of thousands of Wrimos using that search function!

I hope you’re all getting on towards 11,666 words! Tonight at midnight marks the end of Week One.

Happy writing to all, and to all a good weekend.

Lindsey