This Beautiful Tuesday

[Cross-posted to Blogspot, Facebook, and LiveJournal.]

So, I have a request for all of the people that read this blog, and it comes from the bottom of my heart.

You know that thing I do every November where I basically ignore you for a month, talk and mumble to myself a whole lot, and never seem to be on time to anything? It's called National Novel Writing Month, and it's hosted through the lovely people at nanowrimo.org. The site was founded by Chris Baty back in 1999 in order to give those people who thought "one day, I'll write a novel" a chance to make it into a reality.

The site is free to use, the forums are loaded with information and yet still load really quickly (thanks to new cloud computing servers), and many many users (around 150,000 participants in total) have a place to come and hang out during November where they can get support in reaching a magnificent goal.

You guys have seen my success in the past three years with this. In 2007 I wrote a 61k novel, last year I wrote an 88k novel, and this year I've already completed a 113k novel, ten short stories, and working towards another completed 50k novel by the end of the month. The thing is, I would not have been able to do it had it not been for the amount of support I've had from other users on the forums. They also understand that it feels like the end of the world when your plot won't budge, and they also understand the joy of finally breaking through the writer's block and pulling out a piece of prose that might not even be so bad for a first draft.

The thing is, NaNoWriMo is built off of donations. These are donations from companies, from users, or from users that have been sponsored by their friends. Also, I believe a portion from the merchandising also goes towards fundraising. There's a problem with this: novelists aren't always able to give as much as they'd like. This year, NaNoWriMo has raised only 4.5% of their operating costs. This doesn't cover even just the NaNoWriMo side, let alone the Young Writer's Program, which helps kids in elementary and middle school to write, and Script Frenzy, which encourages participants to write a 100-page script during the month of... March? April? (Yeah, I don't do Screnzy, but it's important to mention it, since it's another invention of the Office of Letters and Light.)

So, in order to counter this, NaNoWriMo is having its largest fund drive ever this Tuesday. November 24, from 12:01 AM Pacific time to 11:59 PM Pacific time. (For you English types, that's 8:01 AM on November 24 to 7:59 AM on November 25; for you ND types, that's 3:01 AM on November 24 to 2:59 AM on November 25. Fun with time zones ahoy!) Their goal is to raise $100,000 in 24 hours. It's totally doable as long as people like me reach out to help. But to put this in perspective, the largest fundraising day NaNoWriMo has ever had landed in at $30,000.

So, I'm going to be doing my part. Since I've been using the forums for the past three years and $10 is the minimum donation that will get you a donor halo on your profile, I will be donating $30 to the cause. You can donate as much as you'd like, just please, please donate. I'm looking at you, you folks who forgot my birthday this year. You know what, I'd rather have a sizable donation going to NaNoWriMo this year from me anyways, since I'm doing my best ever and probably won't have the time to be this prolific ever again. So, whatever you'd normally spend on a friend's birthday ($20-$50, let's say), please, donate it to the site instead, it would mean much more to me.

Because the fact is, if we don't raise enough money... NaNoWriMo isn't coming back next year. There will be no forums for me to enjoy while I flesh out my novels, and without those forums I may not have the energy to do it alone. So, please. If you care about me, if you care about what I like, if you care that I've been pouring out my heart and soul this month into these novels of mine... please. Please donate. Or grab some merchandise from the store. (They have some pretty awesome posters, even for the non-novelists, and on my Blogspot blog I've even listed bits of merch I'd want for Christmas.)

There's an incentive for reaching the goal on Tuesday: Chris Baty, the founder of NaNoWriMo, has promised to pen a song entitled "This Beautiful Tuesday" and perform it on video (with his other volunteers doing interpretive dance alongside him). It's enough of a reward that I definitely want to see it. So please, everyone. (Notice how many times I've said 'please' in this post? I really mean it.) Please donate. Please help me keep alive one of the things that I feel makes me who I am.

- Jen -