Breaking News

Have some extra time this spring? Want to throw yourself into another rewarding and brain-busting challenge? Script Frenzy is recruiting Municipal Liaisons to support and encourage the ambitious scribes that are pounding out 100-page scripts this April. Sign up and get ready for the most fun you’ve ever had during tax season.

In other news, the T-shirt sale was a smash hit! We have sold out of nearly everything except for the youth sizes of the YWP tee. If you have a book-loving toddler, niece, or nephew, check it out! The sale ends Monday, February 2.

12,073 of you have filled out the all-participant survey. Hot cakes! Thank you so much for your input. If you haven’t already, take a look and share your two cents. We really appreciate your feedback!

We’ll see you over at the Frenzy!

Lindsey

Hey there! If you wrote with us in November and have about ten minutes to spare, would you mind taking our NaNoWriMo 2008 participant survey? Pretty please? We'd love to have your thoughts on what you liked this year and what needs improvement.

Go to the survey!

Thank you! Also, to help celebrate National Oatmeal Month we're having a $10 t-shirt sale in the store! Every shirt except for this year's Winner shirt/sticker combo is just $10 until February 2.

Yay oatmeal!

Chris

Happy 2009, everyone! Tavia, Lindsey, Sam, Bradford and I have happily returned from our various corners of the holiday world. Over the break, I started making digital note cards for my most monstrous to-do list item: A battle-to-the-death with my 2006 NaNoWriMo novel. I've been working on it for two years. I'm going to try and have it fully revised and ready to show to my fellow humans by the end of May.

I think it's going to be a good year.

We're still doing a ton of NaNoWriMo wrap-up, including working on a survey for all participants that will hopefully go out next week. We've also been working hard on getting Script Frenzy ready for its third year. Lights! Camera! Almost action!

Having just written 2009 on my first check and feeling a little strange about it,

Chris

ps: Right before we left for vacation, we learned that the Young Writers Program received a grant from the venerable San Francisco Foundation. Thank you, SFF!

We just got our reorder of the 2008 Winner's shirts, which means we now have a handful of XS, 4XL, and 5XL shirts on hand. Yay!

Even with the reorder, we're close to running out of all three of this year's NaNoWriMo tees---the brown 10th Anniversary shirt, the super-limited-edition 2008 Winner's shirt, and the baby-blue YWP "I Eat Novels For Breakfast" tee. We won't be printing any more, so if you'd like one (especially if you're a tricky size), I'd go ahead and grab it.

Having trouble not wearing my Author shirt every day,

Chris

Few in quantity and radiant in appearance, our first-ever NaNoWriMo winner's shirts are now in the store. All proceeds from the shirts will go to improving the NaNoWriMo and Young Writers Program websites for 2009. We'll only be doing one more re-order of these babies, and the batch now in the store is unfortunately the only group we'll be able to ship out before the holidays.

Also, in case you wanted one of our great 10th anniversary shirts: The selection in the store now is the last we'll be selling. I think all sizes are still available, but they're selling out quickly.

Thanks for supporting NaNoWriMo through your fine fashion choices!

Chris

ps: That's my new laptop modeling the winner's sticker!

After the United States Postal Service servers went down this morning (making it impossible for our store to process shipping rates and thus take orders), we became concerned, and ultimately our tech man Sam decided to dispatch a goodwill band of Office of Letters and Light ninjas to the Postal Castle to see if they could be of service.

And apparently they were! The USPS servers just came back online, which means that our ninjas convinced the Postal Queen to reconnect her servers, and our store is once again ready to dispense beautiful NaNoWriMo tees, travel mugs, and donor thank-you gifts, just in time for the holidays.

Yay, ninjas!

Worrying Sam might be dumbing down his tech explanations to me a little too much these days,

Chris

UPDATE: The United States Postal Service's servers are still down, which means our store---along with hundreds of others around the country---can't look up the postal rates it needs to work properly. The USPS was forecasting "end of business day Monday" for a fix, but they're still down. Waaah. Donations work, but it's looking like it may be Tuesday before merch orders will be back. Which is sad, because another shipment of mugs just got here! As did....something exciting that I'm not supposed to talk about just yet.

This morning we woke to find that our store is having trouble finding shipping methods for your orders.

After all the action it’s seen in the past couple months, I figure it cuddled up in a warm virtual blanket for a little nap. Hopefully, it’ll just need a little prodding and a huge cup of coffee before it’s back up and ready to take your orders.

All tech hands are on deck to fix this problem as soon as possible. Once it’s fixed, we’ll post another Breaking News to let you know!

Your friend,
Tavia

Drop by the NaNoWriMo blog for Emily Bristow's announcement on NaNoWriMo 2008's top fundraising regions! Thanks to everyone who has contributed to this year's event, whether by volunteering your time and talent, donating, or sending encouraging words and suggestions our way. You are, quite simply, the best!

Lindsey
Community Liaison

Note: The United States Postal Service is still having server troubles, which is in turn making our postage-calculation and address look-up not work in the store. This does not affect donations, though! Thanks for your patience, and feel free to visit our Donation Station while the store is on hold!

So these past four days I've been feeling what I think a lot of Wrimos are feeling: Weird.

It's strange to have my evenings free for non-noveling chores. Yesterday night, I went grocery shopping for the first time in weeks, and my attention kept gravitating to high-energy, easily scarfable foods that wouldn't leave an oily trail on my keyboard.

"I can eat like a normal person now," I realized.

It was a discomforting thought.

If you've been fighting to post-NaNo blues this week too, never fear: There's a bunch of great stuff on the NaNo horizon. This week and weekend, there are tons of Thank God It's Over parties around the world to attend, where you can celebrate with your fellow Wrimos. We're having our Pan-Bay Area TGIO on Friday night at 8 PM in San Francisco at Root Division. Check your regional lounge for details of your local fest!

We'll be putting up a new WrimoRadio of 2008 on Monday, and next week I'll be sending out an email with some thoughts on this year and the adventures ahead. Big, Fun, Scary, ahoy!

Still eyeing those scarfables,

Chris

Thanks so much to all our donors who have chipped in over the past few days! We've received donations from almost 7% of our participants, and we're so, so grateful for the support. Still, we've got a long ways to go before we have enough money to launch NaNoWriMo and the Young Writers Program in 2009.

I really can't stress this enough. Getting NaNoWriMo and the Young Writers Program ready for an October 1 launch means we need to have our tiny-but-mighty crew working in the early spring, and spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on technology, supplemental staff, printing, rent, and heaps of other costs.

Next year will be more expensive than this year. We want to invest in a dedicated, part-time tech guru to build new features and integrate more servers into our arsenal. We want to create and install more inspiring activities and word-coaxing functions on the site. We want to curate more pep talks, and provide community-fostering resources to 600 NaNoWriMo chapters around the world. We want to invest in a grantwriter to broaden our foundational funding base. We want to professionalize our curriculum for the Young Writers Program, and forever change the way 50,000 kids and teens see their creative potential.

To do any of this, we need your help. Please make a tax-deductible donation today and help us light up another book on that beautiful fund-o-meter!

We've moved from preliminary stats to close-to-final numbers for words and winners in 2008. The Word Count Scoreboard now includes all the words written in the final hours of the event. With that bump, the total collective word count now stands at (gasp!) 1,643,343,993 words.

Over on the I Wrote A Novel, Now What? page, the CreateSpace free proof copy codes are live for 2008 winners. If you're signed in and a winner, you'll see your code on the page now! We also added some rewriting advice from Sara Gruen, who will soon be putting all of us in her movie. Hooray!

Chris