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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

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!

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

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

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

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

A great email pep talk from Golden Compass author Philip Pullman went out today! If you didn’t get it in your inbox due to overzealous spam blockers, you can read it on our Pep Talks page when we post it there Friday afternoon. And speaking of the Pep Talks page, I’d like to recommend a pre-weekend jaunt through the pep talks that Sue Grafton and Tom Robbins wrote last year.

So. We’re heading into the second weekend of NaNoWriMo. This is a make-or-break period for most Wrimos. If you can set aside a couple hours to write each day this weekend, you’ll get a noveling boost that will lift your spirits and carry you through the rest of the month. Neglect your novel, and you’ll fall behind on your word count, contract scurvy, and lose all your teeth.

I see it happen every year. Please don’t let it happen to you. Make time to write. Try doing 1000-word sessions in the morning, afternoon, and evening on both Saturday and Sunday. Build a word-cushion that you can take naps on in the week ahead.

Eh. The week ahead. Week Two.

More on that wonderful, horrible period soon!

Chris
NaNoWriMo

I spoke with the Great NaNoWriMo Calendar this morning, and she said we should be at about 8333 words by the end of the day today. She also told me that some of you ignored her suggestion to be at 6666 words yesterday, and that she may let you slide on that if you get to 8333 tonight.

Tough lady.

Also, the network of informants we’ve planted amongst your friends, family, and internet service providers have reported that National Backup Your Novel Day on Monday was a dismal failure. Please: For the good of the world. Back that novel up.

We had a major global change this week that will end up impacting the lives of most of our participants. I’m speaking, of course, of Daylight Savings Time. Next time you’re signed into the site, please stroll over to My NaNoWriMo--->Edit User Settings and make sure your time zone is still good to go. If not, you may end up losing an hour to validate your novel on November 30. This would make the Great NaNoWriMo Calendar cry.

As I reported yesterday, we’ve got another server in on the site and Russ and Sam have done some high-end geekery to make it do good things for us. We began feeling the beneficial impact of it yesterday afternoon. We’ll still have congestion for a couple hours around noon, Pacific, each day. But things are much better across the board. Thanks for your patience as we work around the clock to make room on the NaNoWriMo and Young Writers Program sites for a combined turn-out of 140,000 participants!

Wow.

I also want to give a special thanks to tech volunteer Rob Diaz for all his assistance this year, and extend a high-five to everyone who has sent in encouragement and bug reports as we've gotten the NaNoWriMo adventure underway. We couldn't do it without you.

Chris
NaNoWriMo

We interrupt this broadcast to say we got another server up this afternoon and it's done really great things for our load-bearing abilities. In fact, the joy it has brought to our lives makes us want to sing and dance and enjoy an ill-advised plate of nacho-cheese covered jalapeno poppers.

Fiesta!

Anyway, we want to take it a step further tonight (the server, not the cheese), so Russ will briefly take the sites down around 11 pm to implement more goodness. We shouldn’t be gone for more than 20 minutes.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled programming,

Chris
NaNoWriMo
Still at 7031 words

ps: A great Jonathan Stroud pep talk should be in your inbox right now. Philip Pullman will follow on Thursday.

We like to celebrate NABUYND at least once a week in November. To take part in the festivities, don a crazy hat, then email your novel-in-progress to your favorite webmail account, save it to a flash drive, or make someone with a photographic memory read the whole thing. Then keep them out of direct sunlight until the next back-up.

A new WrimoRadio is live! Thanks so much to everyone who emailed in their contributions. We need your voices again for next Monday’s show. Details are in the podcast.

Last night, Sam and Russ took the site down to bring another server on board. The server isn’t doing much at the moment, but Tuesday morning and afternoon Russ will start moving the database queries that are slowing the site down the most over to this new big guy, which will mean more queries can be handled simultaneously, which will mean greater happiness throughout NaNoLand.

Have a monumental Tuesday everyone! It’s a big day!

Chris
7031 words