National Novel Writing Month - Home

Donation Day=huge success

Chris Baty — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 08:05:48 +0000

UPDATE: We ended the day having raised $70,530 in donations!

While I'm waiting for the Fund-o-Meter to refresh with the final totals for Donation Day, I just want to say that we may not have reached our goal of raising $100,000 in 24 hours, but we did raise over $70,000 today! Incredible. This will do a huge amount of good for both NaNoWriMo and the Young Writers Program, as we work to pay this year's bills and set aside money for 2010.

Thanks so much to all our awesome donors who made Donation Day such a success, and to all our MLs who helped get the word out about it (and donated themselves!). We love you more than you know.

Chris

A half hour left! Can we raise $11,340?

Chris Baty — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 07:29:51 +0000

We just have a half hour left in Donation Day! Our dream of reaching $519,600 and singing and dancing for you looks like it may not quite happen this year, but we only need to raise another $11,340 to cross the $500,000 mark on the Fund-o-meter, which would mean we raised over $80,000 in donations in a single day—an enormous, unprecedented accomplishment for us, and fantastic news for our programs.

Please chip in, if you haven't yet! And thanks to everyone who has supported NaNoWriMo and the Young Writers Program on Donation Day! We love you more than you know.

Chris

$67,160 raised! Can we get to $500K by 11:30 PM?

Chris Baty — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 06:42:20 +0000

Okay! We're moving these updates to the half hour, because that's when the Fund-o-Meter refreshes. So that last drive was great. We raised $8,565 in less than two hours, mostly through incredibly kind folks chipping in $10 or $25. Every dollar helps immensely, and it makes me feel incredibly warm and fuzzy to see our donor rates rise from 6% to 6.22%. Given the size of the event this year, that's a big leap!

Super-thanks to our top donors during that drive, including LeAnn, Sandra, Karen, Anita, Paul, Julia, Michael, Heather, Becki, Allegra, and Christopher, and an extra-special thanks to Anne, who will be naming a character in my 2009 NaNoWriMo novel (start thinking of some good names, Anne!).

So we're now standing at $486,760. Before midnight, Pacific, time (in an hour and fifteen minutes), our goal is to get to $519,600. It's a tall order, but do you think we can get to $500,000 on the FOM by 11:30?

Yep. I think we can.

Thanks, everyone, for funding the things you believe in! It's so easy to take the institutions you love for granted. It's a lot harder to remember to step up and support things that make your world a more interesting place to be. You rock!

Chris

$58,595 raised! Naming rights offered!

Chris Baty — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 04:18:08 +0000

We raised $8,070 in that last hour, which is incredible. Thank you, donors! I want to extend an extra huge thanks to Emily, Ian, Joanna, Susan, and Margaret for going above and beyond. Those halos look wonderful on all of you.

We’re at $58,595 now. Our next big goal is reaching $75K by 10 PM, Pacific. We’ll then have two hours to raise $25,000, which will be a cakewalk. And then I can begin composing "That Beautiful Tuesday" and Lindsey will start practicing her improvisational dance steps.

Given the amount of time we have left in our drive and the funds we still want to raise, I’m going old school. For anyone who donates $500 or more before 10 PM, Pacific, I’ll name a character in my 2009 NaNoWriMo novel after you (or a friend of yours).

It’s your chance to be immortalized in a reasonably unhorrible novel! You’ll love it!

Thanks so much for your support, folks! We've moved the participant donation rate above 6%. Can we see 6.5% by 10 pm? The Donation Station awaits!

Chris

$50,000 raised! Goal: $60K by 8 pm!

Chris Baty — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 02:46:48 +0000

Okay, folks! I'm taking over from Lindsey on the Donation Day loving and taskmastering and will be rocking it with you from here to midnight. As of a few minutes ago, we crossed a huge milestone! We started the morning at $419,600. We're now at $470,125. My math sense says that means we've raised....$50,525! Today!

Donors, you rock. Thank you. We're going to make it to $100K today! Our goal for 8 pm, Pacific: Getting to $60,000.

It's a huge leap, but we can do it if just a few hundred more folks pick up a halo in our Donation Station right now. Get that angelic glow! Bathe in the great karma that comes from helping keep NaNoWriMo and YWP going!

In other news, we're screening the brand-new Week Four Tips NaNovideo one homepage block over!

Chris
NaNoWriMo

Episode 15: Week Four tips!

Chris Baty — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 02:16:43 +0000

Chris offers a few tips for the last lap of NaNoWriMo.

$46,785 raised + winning is live!

Chris Baty — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 16:31:10 +0000

Good news! Winning is activated and the correct winner page is displaying! We already have 387 winners, and many more validating all the time. To see who these authors are, go to Author Search --> Advanced Search Options and select the box next to Search Only Winners. Congratulations to everyone who has already crossed the finish line!

And for those who aren't quite there, we have time! I am right there with you. (I am trying to pound out about 3,500 words a night!) We can do it!

If you haven't been following our tremendous Donation Day progress, we're still climbing our way toward $100,000. Every little bit helps!

We love our Wrimos!
Lindsey

Shouting at Karma

Heather Dudley — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 15:17:42 +0000

Get good NaNo Karma
Shoutout your donation

Donation Day begins at $419,600

Chris Baty — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 08:04:51 +0000

Hear ye! Hear ye! To pay the bills for this year's NaNoWriMo and Young Writers Program, and hopefully set aside enough money to do it all again next year, we're throwing a Donation Day party today! Our goal: raising $100,000 in the next 24 hours through our hyper-secure, very handsome Donation Station.

So far, 4.7% of our participants have donated! We love you! To the other 95.3%: We love you, too, and ask that you take a quick minute to think about what NaNoWriMo has been worth to you. If you've gotten something out of the event, please give something back.

Your donation will help us pay for free creative writing programs that bring joy, inspiration, and terrifying deadlines to over 200,000 kids, teens, and adults around the world.

We will also sing and dance for you in a most embarrassing fashion.

Our total amount raised so far in 2009 is $419,600. So our goal is to get to $519,600 by 11:59 PM, Pacific, tonight.

Will you help us get there by picking up a halo right now?

Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!

Chris

Today's Guest: Tally Deushane, singer and songwriting Wrimo

Lindsey Grant — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 23:09:48 +0000

Q:Tally, you wrote a song on your ukulele about today's $100,000 Donation Drive. What inspired you to put your NaNo-love to music?
A: Well, a couple days before NaNoWriMo, I was going crazy counting down the hours until NaNo, wishing I could start my novel. To keep my mind off of things, I was fiddling around with my ukulele (Kaylee), and I started to just sing about (what else?) NaNoWriMo. It started as a response to all of the people who wanted to know why I choose to spend my November going insane, and turned into a song about how I was already going insane waiting for it to start! About an hour later, I had the music and lyrics to an original song.

I thought it would stop there, because I wasn't planning on having much ukulele time in November... until my main character convinced me that she needed to play the ukulele. I wrote about 12 songs in the context of my novel, and I started to gain a bit of a following on YouTube. When the announcement was made about the Donation Drive, I thought, "Hey, my videos get about 50-60 views, and if even half of those viewers donate $10, that's still $250." And, even if someone watching it doesn't immediately go donate, I know from experience that silly little YouTube tunes have a habit of becoming earworms. I hope that maybe my song will get in someone's head and kind of subliminally motivate them to donate. It might be a bit of a stretch, but it would be pretty cool.

Tally Deushane is a third-year Wrimo and a sophomore at Agnes Scott College in Decatur, GA. She is spending her November writing a novel and ukulele songs, and she is unsure exactly why her roommate hasn't kicked her out yet. You can see her video here.