Lani Diane Rich
UPDATE ON 12/20/2009: We've selected our two winners at random and as soon as we hear back from them and confirm they can take the class, we'll post their names here! If they can't, we'll pick two more winners! they are Angel and Angie! Thanks to everyone who entered! The excerpts were great!

Once upon a time, long before Lani Diane Rich was a New York Times bestselling author of nine novels, she was an aspiring writer and stay-at-home mom living in Alaska. It was October 31, 2002, she was surfing the internet, and she happened across the National Novel Writing Month website.

Lani signed up for NaNoWriMo on a whim, and wrote what would become the RITA-award-winning Time Off for Good Behavior (Warner Books), the second-ever NaNoWriMo manuscript to be published. She followed that up with eight more novels, two of them NaNoWriMo manuscripts (Maybe Baby and Wish You Were Here).

She’s funny. She’s a great writer. And, best of all, she’s teaching an online workshop on revision over at Storywonk.com in January, and she’s offered to give away two slots in her class to NaNoWriMo participants!

Here’s an overview from Lani on the class:

“When you write a novel in the total freedom of NaNoWriMo, what you end up with is the good stuff---that rare, magical you-ness that can be difficult for authors to access when their internal editor is shouting commands and criticism over their shoulders. What you need from a revision process is to learn how to insert structure to make your magic accessible to the readers you'd like to have - agents, editors, or the mass populace. This Storywonk Revision class walks you through the revision process with this in mind, breaking revision into phases that allow you to focus on specific objectives with each pass. The six-week course includes live, weekly, online video classes (recorded for your convenience) and access to a private forum where I provide personal encouragement and answers to your questions.”

Want one of those two free slots? Just post the first paragraph from your 2009 NaNoWriMo novel in the comments section of this blog! Please include a link to your NaNoWriMo author profile or blog so we can get ahold of you and let you know you won. We’ll pick two excerpts at random on December 20, and you’ll be off to Storywonk revisionland!

Thanks, Lani! Good luck, everyone!

Chris

When historians look back over the 00's, November 2009 will be remembered for three news headlines that changed our lives forever:

1) Claims and Risk Management Service Provider Avizent Appoints Shirley Collinsworth to Lead Newly Created Transportation Liability Unit

2) Accuvant Named One of the Best Places to Work in Denver

3) NaNoWriMo Goes All Kinds of Crazy

Seriously.

General Stats Round Up!

(This is just for NaNoWriMo.org---NaNoWriMo's Young Writers Program was also absolutely enormous this year, and will have its own round-up).

• This year, we had 167,150 participants, up 40% from 2008's total of 119,301.
• We wrote a total of 2,427,190,537 words, up 48% from 2008's collective word count of 1,643,343,993.
• This averaged out to 14,531 words per person.
• We had 32,173 winners, up 48% from 2008's total of 21,683.
• This gave us a 19.2% win rate, the highest in modern NaNoWriMo history. (Last year we had an 18.2% win rate; in 2007 it was 15.1%).

Our Top 50 Wordiest NaNoWriMo Regions

1. Seattle
2. Maryland
3. Los Angeles
4. Germany and Austria
5. New York City
6. Chicago
7. Holland and Belgium
8. Twin Cities
9. London
10. Dallas/Ft. Worth
11. Portland
12. Atlanta
13. Denver
14. Austin
15. East Bay
16. Toronto
17. Northern Virginia
18. Boston
19. Melbourne
20. England, Elsewhere
21. Vancouver
22. Houston
23. Sydney
24. Sacramento
25. South Bay
26. New Hampshire
27. Finland
28. New Zealand
29. Philly
30. San Francisco
31. San Diego
32. St. Louis
33. Salt Lake City
34. Detroit
35. Birmingham-West Midlands
36. Sweden
37. Phoenix
38. Edmonton
39. Pennsylvania, Elsewhere
40. Pittsburgh
41. Michigan, Elsewhere
42. Central New Jersey
43. Kansas City
44. France
45. Raleigh-Durham
46. Maine
47. Ottawa
48. Orlando
49. Columbus
50. Australia, Elsewhere

Our Top 50 Wordiest NaNoWriMo Regions by Average Words Per Person

1. Margaret River, Australia
2. Tanzania,
3. Quebec, Quebec
4. Thailand
5. Emsdale, Ontario
6. Daytona Beach, Florida
7. Russellville, Arkansas
8. Moses Lake, Washington
9. Malta
10. Ridgecrest, California
11. Brevard County, Florida
12. Isle of Skye, Scotland
13. Fulton, Missouri
14. Kingsland, Georgia
15. Northern Ireland
16. Sebring, Florida
17. Latvia
18. Kewanee-Henry County, Illinois
19. Northeast Ireland
20. Sudbury, Ontario
21. Chadron, Nebraska
22. Lewisville, North Carolina
23. Cornwall, England
24. Oxford, Ohio
25. Dickinson, North Dakota
26. Plymouth, Massachusetts
27. Micronesia
28. Longview, Texas
29. Chattanooga, Tennessee
30. Richmond, Indiana
31. Central Iowa
32. Lake County, Ohio
33. Emporia, Kansas
34. Marion, Ohio
35. Lewis County, Washington
36. Exeter and Devon, England
37. Oxfordshire, England
38. Naperville, Illinois
39. France
40. Taiwan
41. Elsewhere, South Carolina
42. Key West, Florida
43. Niagara, Ontario
44. Gloucester and Cheltenham, England
45. Tiffin, Ohio
46. North Bay, Ontario
47. Bulgaria
48. McMinnville, Oregon
49. Elsewhere, Idaho
50. Switzerland

Our site traffic was also off the charts. Thanks to a generous educational grant covering our fall quarter, we were able to move to Amazon Web Services EC2, which completely rocked our pancakes, and allowed us to add dozens of servers in the blink of an eye. Which we did. Oh, did we ever. Site slowness was effectively ended. We rejoiced.

In November, we had 4,014,203 visits, up 44% from 2008. We had 25,710,491 pageviews, up 48% from 2008.

Top 50 NaNoWriMo Cities according to Google Analytics, based on Number of November Visits from those Fine Places

City/Visits
1. London 109,608
2. New York 53,280
3. Seattle 46,252
4. Los Angeles 44,234
5. Portland 39,124
6. San Francisco 38,047
7. Melbourne 33,916
8. Sydney 33,042
9. Denver 32,369
10. Chicago 32,237
11. (not set) 30,774
12. Minneapolis 24,113
13. Austin 20,101
14. Washington 19,305
15. Atlanta 18,880
16. Edmonton 17,392
17. Brisbane 16,332
18. St Louis 15,951
19. Sacramento 15,712
20. Houston 15,165
21. Calgary 15,107
22. Don Mills 15,026
23. Dallas 14,907
24. Salt Lake City 14,116
25. Manchester 13,957
26. Tucson 13,732
27. Vancouver 13,619
28. Columbus 13,381
29. Ottawa 13,182
30. Albuquerque 12,797
31. Phoenix 12,673
32. Helsinki 12,558
33. Philadelphia 12,295
34. Eugene 12,293
35. Raleigh 12,121
36. Perth 11,809
37. Indianapolis 11,377
38. San Antonio 11,294
39. Colorado Springs 11,167
40. Auckland 10,884
41. Dublin 10,788
42. Singapore 10,671
43. San Diego 10,639
44. Brooklyn 10,573
45. Pittsburgh 10,351
46. Madison 10,276
47. Honolulu 9965
48. Adelaide 9946
49. Birmingham 9908
50. Kansas City 9893

Top 50 NaNoWriMo Countries according to Google Analytics, based on Number of November Visits from those Fine Places

Country/Visits
1. United States 2,818,077
2. United Kingdom 314,267
3. Canada 282,009
4. Australia 117,785
5. Germany 64,368
6. Netherlands 52,598
7. Finland 29,774
8. Sweden 25,940
9. New Zealand 23,171
10. France 23,163
11. (not set) 18,304
12. Ireland 14,818
13. Norway 13,691
14. Japan 12,583
15. Philippines 11,383
16. South Africa 10,983
17. Singapore 10,717
18. Spain 10,626
19. Belgium 10,518
20. Denmark 10,193
21. India 10,172
22. Austria 8800
23. Mexico 8542
24. Italy 7572
25. Switzerland 7173
26. South Korea 6592
27. Malaysia 5731
28. Brazil 4657
29. Portugal 4450
30. Israel 3907
31. China 3513
32. Indonesia 3280
33. Poland 3205
34. Hong Kong 3085
35. Romania 2826
36. Hungary 2568
37. Argentina 2535
38. Russia 2427
39. Puerto Rico 2366
40. Estonia 2347
41. Latvia 1957
42. Turkey 1945
43. United Arab Emirates 1796
44. Czech Republic 1743
45. Chile 1652
46. Greece 1629
47. Thailand 1465
48. Iceland 1136
49. Guam 1127
50. Taiwan 1111

Yay, stats geeking!

So, if this was your first time, how did it go? If you're a returning Wrimo, how did this NaNoWriMo feel different from previous years? Did the bigger crowds make for a more exciting event? Or just bigger crowds? Did you meet any interesting characters at write-ins? Did your region move up the list of wordiness? We'd love to hear your thoughts, impressions, and highlights of NaNo 2009!

Chris

This is the kind of thing that only me and about four other people (hi, mom!) are interested in, but for those four people, I wanted to post a screenshot from Google Analytics showing yesterday's traffic to NaNoLand.

November 1 has always brought our servers to their knees. This year, Dan moved us to Amazon's EC2 cloud computing platform so we could try to better handle everyone who comes to the site in the Cyclone Window of October 30-November 4.

It's working. We saw "page timed out" screens during peak hours yesterday, and there are a couple other things we want to improve today and tomorrow. But so far this year's Cyclone Window has felt more like a Gentle Shower Window, despite the fact that we have 40,000 more people on the site this year than last. Then I got up this morning and saw exactly how much traffic the site had been handling yesterday and still chugging along. (For comparison, the 2008 traffic is in green.)

For the record, we had 271,320 visits in that 24-hour period, with our servers offering up 2,079,398 pages to visitors. Busiest day in NaNo history by an extraordinary margin.

Thanks so much to Dan for all his hard work (and lost weekends!). Thanks so much to all our halo'd donors for allowing us to improve our systems!

Back to my novel!

Chris

I've always found it uncanny the way perfectly healthy gadgets seem to implode during NaNoWriMo. Ipods that we're depending on for noveling soundtracks decide to spontaneously reformat themselves. Participants' laptops crash and burn with alarming frequency (usually taking everything from a few chapters to entire books with them when they go).

This is why it's such a great idea to email your novel to yourself via webmail every few days in November. It's also why I wasn't completely surprised today when the hard drive in my new Dell laptop got corrupted and died. Eeep! I've never had a computer just die before (see the sad photographic evidence, above). Anyone else getting the gadget meltdowns a little early this year?

Chris

So 2008 was a really great year for NaNoWriMo. We had an all-time-high win rate (18.2%), a record-smashing number of words written (1.6 billion), and a huge number of participants (119,301). After the event ended, we all spent a fair amount of time here on the blog scratching our heads over what made 2008 such a bountiful year for month-long noveling. Was it the recession? The historic nature of it being the 10th NaNoWriMo? The fact that November magically harbored five weekends that year?

Whatever it was, the numbers were very, very big.

This year is looking like NaNoWriMo will grow again. Site traffic is up 20%. Sign-ups are up 10% from this time last year, and we just sent out our annual "come back and write with us!" email to last year's participants (four days later than we did last year).

So here's the question: Why might more people be signing up to write novels this year than last? Is it still the recession giving people more free time for book-writing? Is it just more people hearing about the challenge through things like Twitter and Facebook? If this is your first year, what inspired you to take part now?

And does anyone care to take a guess on what this year's sign-up numbers for NaNoWriMo will be?

Excited and nervous,

Chris

On Friday, Lindsey and I spent the morning at Babylon Burning, the San Francisco screenprinter who is handling all the NaNoWriMo shirts (and new sweatshirt!) this year. We listened to the Strokes and the Shangri-Las, debated various Pantone colors and design dimensions, and watched as the team there began pulling the first of the new shirts off the line. Thanks so much to Babylon for hosting us! Here are some photos from the big day…

Arriving at Babylon

The line-up ahead of us

Boxes of blank shirts waiting to be transformed into NaNogoods

The films that get turned into screens

Mike, screening up a storm

Figuring out the right green color for the black NaNo '09 shirt took us almost an hour

The green picked, the shirts start rolling (and Clam starts stacking)

We wanted to make a fun, new NaNoWriMo shirt. Since NaNo feels a lot like camp to us, we asked our graphic design whiz Graham to make a design for "Camp NaNoWriMo." The slogan on the sign (hard to make out here) reads: "An idyllic writers retreat, smack-dab in the middle of your crazy life." We love Graham.

Close up of Camp NaNoWriMo shirts

One of the comments we get every year is that we need to offer more shirts for people who aren't participating that year, but who still want to show their support of NaNoWriMo. Designer Graham came up with a simple, all-purpose tee that we're totally in love with. It's the first white tee we've made since 2002!

We're doing the 2009 shirt on both black and cranberry. This is me proudly waving the first cranberry to come off the line.

And, for the first time ever: NaNoWriMo sweatshirts! We went with these incredibly thick, soft sweats that cost a little more. But they feel like you're being hugged by a thousand chinchillas.

Lindsey feels the chinchilla love.

Last Thursday the city of Oakland threw a big party to celebrate the "unveiling" of Uptown, the neighborhood where OLL has lived for the last three years. The neighborhood has really come a long way since we moved in, with a ton of great new cafes, bars, and the beautifully restored Fox Theater opening up in the past year. It's an exciting place to be!

Anyway, during the street party, our Development Director Elizabeth and I snuck up into a condo open house and I took this picture down onto the street party below. It showcases the great Fox theater sign, OLL's building, and the enormous black arrow that looms over our office day and night.

Has anyone out there in NaNoLand been to this part of Oakland recently? Does anyone else live with a looming arrow?

Yay, Oakland!

Chris

Wooohoo! I just got back Monday from a three-month sabbatical to Melbourne, Australia. I was there to commune with marsupials, see friends, drink coffees with exceedingly practical names like "flat white" and "long black," spend an embarrassing amount of money on Arnott's cookie products, and hole up with a NaNo-novel I started in 2005.

While I was down under, I read a bunch of great Australian novels, including Steve Toltz's wildly creative A Fraction of the Whole, and Peter Carey's True History of the Kelly Gang. If you've been following the discussions on our Twitter feed, Peter Carey is, ahem, relevant.

(Hint. Hint.)

I also had a chance to meet up for drinks and Mongolian barbecue with the local NaNo groups in Melbourne and Sydney (hello Melbournians! Hello Sydneysiders!). There's nothing better than traveling halfway around the world to eat stir-fry, drink beer, and swap stories with high-velocity novelists.

Below is my favorite photo from the trip, taken by my friend Jane. Has anyone else had the pleasure of hanging out with kangaroos on golf courses? It's the greatest!

So, so glad to be back with Tavia, Lindsey, and Dan here in the office, but so, so missing my underperforming Demons,

Chris

Last week I asked Wrimos to cook up some perspective-bringing comparisons that could help us wrap our heads around this year's record-setting, pants-melting collective word count. I was hoping we'd hit 1.5 billion words, and we ended up clearing that by more than 100,000,000 words.

Here are some of your explanations of how best to understand 1.5 billion's majesty. Got some more calculations to add to this groundbreaking mathematical treatise? Add 'em in the comments! And thanks to Sarah Panian for all her compiling help!

1.5 billion words…