Breaking News

Can I just say THANK YOU to everyone who has been using Goodsearch on our behalf? When we first heard about it, it seemed too good to be true. But lo and behold, we got our first check from them last fall. We'll be getting another check for over $1000 (!) this fall, which will have a huge impact on what we're able to do for NaNoWriMo.

If you've been part of our Goodsearch army, we can't thank you enough. If you haven't tried Goodsearch yet, please give it a shot! If enough folks do it, we could end up paying for some cool new NaNoWriMo features entirely through search funds.

Thanks again, everyone!

Chris
NaNoWriMo

ps: I'm halfway through a rewrite of my 2006 NaNo novel and I'm loving and hating it. Anyone else having turbulent times in rewriteland? NaNoMail me. Let's commiserate.

I wanted to give everyone advance warning that the second-annual Script Frenzy will be commencing on April 1. We've moved it up two months, and opened it up to more writers. Now, in addition to original feature-length screenplays and stage plays, the escapade includes adaptations of novels, short film scripts, graphic novel and comic book scripts, and even radio dramas.. As long as you cumulatively write 100 pages of script in April, you're a winner.

If you've been thinking that one of your NaNoWriMo manuscripts would make an awesome movie or play, April is the ideal month to find out. I wrote my first screenplay for Script Frenzy last year, and learning to tell a big story using only dialogue ended up paying big dividends in my novel-writing as well. I'd say Script Frenzy made my novel dialogue and pacing 349% less sucky overall, bringing both of them all the way up to a third-grade level.

Sweet progress.

I was also pleasantly surprised by how easy the dreaded formatting turned out to be, and how many great pieces of free scriptwriting software there are out there to automate the whole process. Here's to a heavily scripted April!

Chris

A quick message to sophisticated sippers around the world: Our final re-order of black NaNoWriMo mugs has arrived in our Oakland offices. We now have 239 of the sweet li'll guys.

We love them deeply, but we want what's best for them. And what's best for them is going to live with you. The mug adoption fee is just $15 plus shipping, making them much less expensive than a puppy. And who doesn't love puppies?

If you're still feeling guilty for not getting a Christmas present for that special Wrimo in your life, a quick trip to our mug-filled store will solve all your problems. Best of all, the proceeds go to the 2008 NaNoWriMo and our Young Writers Program.

And speaking of annoying merchandise talk! From now on, all copies of No Plot? No Problem! sold through the Office of Letters and Light store will be autographed. Tavia and I just got around to realizing that I am the author of the book, and I can therefore sign them as often as I like.

I knew 2008 was going to be a year of breakthroughs!

Hoping you're having a great January,

Chris

ps: We still have two dozen more of our red California Prop 65 Warning mugs/pencil-holders as well. We've dropped the price to $1.99 to help them also find good, loving homes. Quickly.

Happy January! We're back in the office from winter holidays and are 15 pounds heavier, and many times happier. We also now possess Guitar Hero 3 skills that are nothing short of bruising.

If you are on our email list, you got an email from us about the Office of Letters and Light's Big, Fun, Scary Adventure Challenge for 2008. Didn't get the email? You can learn all about it (and post your own adventure!) in the BFS forum.

Getting signed up for that bike-repair course any day now (I promise!),

Chris
NaNoWriMo

The Office of Letters and Light will be closing (and double-locking) our doors from December 20th to January 2 to force our hard-working staff out into the sunlight. We'll leave the store open over the vacation, but merchandise and donor goodies won't be shipped out until we return on January 2.

Also, the cut-off for donating and getting a NaNoWriMo halo and receiving any of the items in the 2007 donor goodie packages is December 31. Donations made after December 31 will receive the 2008 goodies and halos when the site relaunches in October.

Keep your eyes peeled for a final email from us before the year is out.

Thanks for a wonderfully wordy 2007! Happy holidays everyone!

Chris

There's no better fix for the post-NaNo blues than a juicy new installment of WrimoRadio. Show notes and baby photos coming in the morning!

Is it really almost mid-December?

Chris

Yeeehaaaww! We crossed the $275K mark, which means we've reached our fundraising goal for the year. Thank you, thank you, thank you! The money now in our Fund-o-meter represents all the money raised from direct donations, Firstgiving sponsorships, and merchandise sales through our online store.

As announced in the email that went out on Wednesday, the donation that pushed us over the $275K mark will land the donor a special prize straight out of the National Public Radio playbook---my voice on his or her outgoing voicemail or personal communication device of choice. (If the winner would prefer, the prize can also be me not putting my voice on their voice mail). We'll contact the winner on Monday, and reveal their identity after we've talked to them.

Thanks so much to everyone who made a donation or bought something in our store! Every tax-deductible dollar we receive will bring more improvements to the NaNoWriMo and Young Writers Program sites for 2008.

A new WrimoRadio will be going up on December 11th.

Sweet day, sweet day.

Woo hoo!

Chris

We're continuing all our catch-up work here behind the scenes, taking care of the avalanche of emails that came in on the last day of the event and over the weekend. Thanks so much to everyone who has been sending Tavia and I nice notes about their NaNoWriMo experiences this year. They really make us feel like a million bucks.

Our "I Wrote a Novel, Now What?" page should be up tonight or tomorrow. I'm hard at work on the final episode of WrimoRadio, which is shaping up to be the longest episode yet. Be sure to send in your memorable moments!

A wrap-up email to all participants will go out late this week, and we are still shaking our heads in love and in admiration over the great job our Municipal Liaisons did this year in organizing NaNoWriMo writing adventures all around the world.

Wow. Just. Wow.

More soon!

Chris

ps: Thanks to Cybele, the December and Beyond forums are live!

The last grain of sand has tumbled through the hourglass, and NaNoWriMo 2007 is now history. Congratulations to everyone who took part!

We'll put together some final stats early next week, but barring some unforeseen word-count circumstances, it looks like Seattle, Washington has typed their way into the record books as 2007's wordiest region. Way to go, Seattle writers! Runners up (in order of word count) are Maryland, Germany and Austria, the Twin Cities, Los Angeles, Chicago, London, New York, Portland, and England Elsewhere. It's so great to see an international array of regions in that Top 10 list.

We'll be rolling out the time-honored "I Wrote a Novel, Now What?" page next week, which will include some thoughts on what to do with the uncomfortable amounts of free time we now have on our hands, as well as tips on rewriting and revising from some NaNo novelists who have sold their month-long manuscripts. We'll also launch our December and Beyond Forum, and I'll be sending out an email to everyone laying down the gauntlet for another year of big, fun, and scary adventures.

If you are a Big, Fun, Scary Adventure Challenge winner from last year, please make sure you've sent us your name and email address via the general contact form on our Contact page. (Putting "BFS Adventure Challenge Winner" in the subject line will help us out a lot.). The BFS winner's certificates are going out next week via email. If this is all gibberish to you, don't worry: It'll all make more sense next week when you get the email.

On December 11th, I'll put up the final episode of WrimoRadio for the year. Wanna be on the show? Check out the show notes page for Episode 5 to find out how!

Thanks to our staff, volunteers, Municipal Liaisons, everyone who answered questions and gave encouragement in the forums, everyone who supported our programs by buying something in our store, and our dreamy, dreamy donors. We love you guys.

More on Monday,

Chris

ps: Thank God It's Over Parties are happening this week in a town near you! Check your regional forum for information. No party in your area? Come to our party on December 1 in San Francisco!

It's the last few hours of NaNoWriMo '07! If you're still writing and haven't yet validated, here are instructions for doing so. Also, please set your time zone on your profile. If you come to the site and it's before 11:59:59 PM, local time, on November 30th, and the Word Count Validator has disappeared, it's because your time zone is not properly set. You can set it under Edit Profile--->Account Settings tab--->Locale Settings, and the validator will reappear.

Also, a reminder: As of 11:59:59 PM local time, your word count and excerpt for 2007 will be locked in and unchangeable through to next September, so make sure both are updated to your liking before then.

And we want to hug everyone who answered our email call to donate. Because of your generosity, the NaNo and Young Writers Program sites will be able to stay open until next September. Yay!

We're still dramatically under our fundraising goal for making improvements to the NaNoWriMo site. There's a lot of work to do. The current site is like a house of wonders where amazing things happen, but none of the exhibits are properly labeled and the light switches for some of the rooms are hidden on trees outside.

We're ready to improve, clarify, and upgrade the place this spring and summer. But unless more than 5% of our participants donate, those major improvements and investments in hardware won't happen. And we'll continue to cut corners we shouldn't be cutting, because we don't have the money to do it any other way.

You guys deserve the best site on the planet. We're working to get the loans, corporate sponsorships, and grants to help pay for part of it. We need your help with the rest. Please donate today.

On a personal note, thanks so much to everyone who sent me encouraging NaNoMails about my word count. I am now purple. And happy. This has been the hardest NaNoWriMo ever for me (I guess there's a reason they don't say the ninth time is the charm). Major high-fives to everyone who struggled through the same distractions, book doubts, and ebbs in writerly momentum and is now an official winner.

For those of you who are still heading towards the finish line: We're rooting for you all the way. The last 5,000 words are like butter. Just get to 45,000, and gravity will help you with the rest.

Go! Go! Go!

Chris