Donation Weekend this weekend

Double Up Donation Weekend is happening this weekend! You can get the full breakdown and answers to any questions you or your participants might have in this document, where the trackers towards our writing and fundraising goals will also be updated regularly. 

We ask MLs to include a mention and brief explanation of Donation Weekend in their regional messaging, so if you haven't already done so, here's some quick text you can use! (Feel free to adapt it as suits your region.)

This weekend is NaNoWriMo's Double-Up Donation Weekend! In addition to being a month-long creative adventure, NaNoWriMo is also a nonprofit organization, and donations to it help support the writing adventures of more than 400,000 participants in its programs all over the world.

And for this weekend only, the power of your donation will be doubled up in more ways than one. You'll receive double the donor goodies, so all $25 donors receive the $50 donor goodies, all $50 donors receive the $100 donor goodies, etc. You'll get a bonus exclusive donor pin for every donation of $25USD or more. And, all weekend long, matching donors will be doubling your donation. And that's not even mentioning the giveaway prizes or the sweepstakes prize! Learn more about all the Donation Weekend festivities here, or go right to the NaNoWriMo store to donate. 

If you'd like additional text or graphics for your region's social media or other spaces, you're also welcome to use any of the material in the promo kit Allison put together for author guests and prize donors.

Important staff update from HQ

I know many of you have already seen my forum post about this, but I wanted to give you a heads up that Letitia will be taking an administrative leave of absence for the month of November. We're limited in what questions we can answer here, but my full post contains more information as well as a request for a bit of extra support from MLs if you're already active in the forums. 

Accessibility checkboxes

There has been a lot of discussion and questions about the new checkboxes for accessibility information in events, particularly the "accessible to fat people" option. We really appreciate how thoughtful and considerate all the feedback has been, and the care being taken around what can be a difficult conversation. You can see my more extensive comments in this post—since these conversations have been happening in quite a few different places, I wanted to make sure to point everyone to my most recent response. 

GWIC and other fun ways to engage

It's been a hectic week, but I've been able to find a few opportunities to write with other Wrimos, and that has been such a source of joy for me and the other staff! I wanted to point out a few of them that you might also enjoy, in case you aren't aware of them:

• GWIC, the Global Write-In Crawl, is happening now! This is a multi-day Discord extravaganza where each stop on the virtual train tour is hosted by a different region or group. I've already been to a couple of stops and it is always an absolute joy. Shout-out to all the MLs organizing and hosting this delightful and well-organized event!
   
• We hosted a series of livestreams on November 1st where we wrote together with authors to give all of us a boost on our day one word counts and some words of inspiration from the professionals. All of them were so wonderful and it was incredibly motivating to hear the huge range of approaches and processes the authors had, and super fun to write with them. They also work surprisingly well as a sprint playlist for your write-ins or your solo writing sessions even without the live aspect!
   
• We've got two more livestreams this weekend as part of Donation Weekend—a middle grade author roundtable on Saturday, and a house party on Sunday. Plus tons more great live events coming up! 

Writers Digest article

Thank you so much to all the MLs who contributed suggestions for the Writers Digest article a few weeks ago! You can read the finished product on the Writers Digest site. 

Okay, so it's November! What should you be doing?

• Check in on your regional landing page, make sure there's a recent post in the chat showing people where to find event information and community conversation, and answer any questions there
   
• Send a regional message if you haven't done so yet in November reminding people to update their word counts and where they can find region information. (And a mention of Donation Weekend as per the info a few sections up in this email!)
   
• Approve all appropriate events that have been submitted to your region—I did another sweep through these today and you've all been really on top of this, thanks so much! I will be approving appropriate events that have been pending for a long time where I haven't heard back from MLs in that region, so if you've left one pending that you aren't sure about, check in on that thread or just reject the event if it's not relevant or appropriate.
   
• Review any ML emails that you missed
   
• Write your novel!!! (Somehow I spent a full word sprint during a GWIC stop this morning writing about trays. Like, the kind that you carry food on. Weirdly, it was quite a funny scene. NaNoWriMo: always unpredictable.) 

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