NaNoWriMo :: NaNoWriMo Blog

On November 22nd, Wrimos from around the world gathered in San Francisco at the Julia Morgan Ballroom to participate in A Night of Writing Dangerously: Write-a-thon 2009!

We've got to start by observing some hardboiled noir tradition: It was a dark and stormy night...

(Between you and me, though, it was a clear and gorgeous night. Atmosphere! Artistic license!)

As one of your friendly registrars, I got to wait behind the closed doors to the entrance while our awesome, costumed Wrimos gathered in the lobby. Kind of an epic moment when those doors flung open and Wrimos came strutting in in all their finery.

We had Wrimos from all over the United States and even some from whole other countries—two all the way from Australia!

In your own words:

Wrimos were greeted with some rad Write-a-thon tote bags filled with goodies. If there was ever a tote bag that signaled the wearer was not to be messed with, it’s this bag.

Our awesome staff and volunteers put together some incredible donations to be raffled off, ranging from gift certificates, to painstakingly crafted paper cranes, to our favorite novels.

Most incredible of all, though:

That’s right. I can confirm for you now that what you’re looking at is a doll of the one and only Chris Baty. A Mini-Chris, if you will. I have to believe that, out there, in one of the millions of parallel universes, there is a universe both awesome enough and weird enough that its toy warehouses cannot stay full of crates of this doll.

Also, yes, that is a Viking helmet.

A small section of the candy buffet, provided by the amazing Cybele. For a more detailed description, you can check out her Candy Blog! Mouth-watering may occur. You’ve been warned.

Lindsey and Sarah, our valiant master of ceremonies, at the podium; the 50,000 word bell sharing center stage. We had 18 winners at the event! Congratulations to: WICKidEGO, Seykolova, ReneeDrake, Ixy_Pixy, DrBSP, ChrisK0, lazym, Kylene, katster, Ethereel, QueenofOdd, tameri_etherton , Jen Gunderson, RoseThorns, Slytherinqt, Modified Bear, Cooper3, and atoma

It was great to see tables bonding over word counts and troublesome protagonists. One of the most amazing things about NaNoWriMo is seeing a true community forming around writing, complete with cheering, commiserating, and oddball traditions:

We had word sprinters racking up some mindblowing numbers. Sprint winners received a grave and coveted honor:

Wars have been fought over glory such as this.

We did have a few hitches; though we’d taped down miles of extension cords and boxes full of power strips all over the ballroom, Wrimos had to dig deep for that technical savvy and general ingenuity to rig up some quick solutions to electricity issues. Just another hurdle leapt, ma’am. Another hurdle leapt.

To reward such hard work, like an angel from some pastry-laden heaven, descended:

Donut Nurse. Psycho Donuts. Deeply disturbed. Deeply delicious.

Haha, I love how the responses to all the sugar got progressively more skeptical. The noir was getting to all of us. Don’t worry! We use our small allotment of power for good, not evil. It’s the NaNoWriMo way.

And finally, it wouldn’t be a proper Night of Writing Dangerously without the keynote speech by the ever-illustrious, imposingly-statured, man behind the doll himself: Chris Baty.

As the night wound down, Wrimos put the pedal to the metal and made those word counts rise:

Alas and alack, the Night of Writing Dangerously had to come to an end at some point. When all was said and done, of the 115 people who turned in their "Words Written Tonight" slips, RoseThorns was the victor, with a word count of 11,952 words. The table words wars total was 543,724 words(!) between the 108 who participated in the table wars.

Thank you to all the amazing people we here at National Novel Writing Month got to meet at the 2009 Night of Writing Dangerously. And here’s to 2010, and hoping to meet even more Wrimos next year!