Donation Day and what Nano means to me.

Well, it’s Donation Day over at National Novel Writing Month; in fact, it’s nearly over, but the donation fun has not been sold out. You still have a chance to win some of the hourly prizes, and the Office of Letters and Light is going to be releasing a special cover song in thanks for donations of over fifty thousand dollars today. And they still need more to cover the cost of putting on such a fabulous world-wide writing event!

I don’t have as much free money to donate around as I have in some previous years, and I’ve already donated two hundred to get into the Night of Writing Dangerously dinner, but I scraped up another twenty-five to join in the Donation Day fun. I didn’t win the hourly prize I had my eye on, but that’s alright.

In conjunction with Donation Day, Nanowrimo is asking people to tweet about ‘what Nano means to me’, and that got me thinking that what it means to me is probably too much to fit into 140 characters.

For one thing, it means all the friends, both at home and around the world, that I’ve met through Nano. I’ve always been shy in public situations, and I actually remember that the first time I went to a local Nano write-in, I sat at the next table and then left before the two MLs (chatting to each other) realized that I was a writer. But bit by bit Nano pulled me into the social side, and this year I’m the Co-ML, welcoming every wrimo to the write-ins and loving it!

On another level, Nanowrimo means something deep about the universal power of story-telling and how it draws us all together.

So best of luck to all you Nano-ers out there as we approach the half-way point in the month, and donate if you can! 🙂