HELP OUT: NaNoWriMo's Young Writers Program Doubles Donations THIS Tuesday 6/17

Here at ChiIL Mama we're huge fans of Nanowrimo and The Young Writers Program. The kids and I have written novels with them in November for years!  National Novel Writers Month is a creative, inspiring frenzy and they get kids and adults stoked to write!  We can vouch for these guys personally. They're the real deal.

Check out their Stories of Tomorrow campaign and help out if you can. They're trying to raise $50,000 by June 23 to rebuild their Young Writers Program website, and to support the future of creative writing for all of us.

As of this writing, they’re at about $14,000—more than a quarter of the way to their goal. To get even closer, they’re planning a fully charged, all-hands-on-deck 24 hours of donation madness.

Here's the scoop right from 

Chris Angotti, Director of Programs:

Epic. Giving. Day. (Please imagine the name read by a booming voice from the skies.)

This Tuesday, June 17, we challenge you to help us raise $10,000 more. Here’s why we have to make it happen:

Author Scott Westerfeld is offering his own $10,000 as a matching donation for the campaign. He’s currently prepping for the release of his NaNo-themed novel Afterworlds, and he pledged this amazing support specifically to our young writers.

So, any dollar you donate is instantly doubled:

• Got $50? Think of it as $100.
• Got $25? Think of it as $50.
• Got $10? Think of it as $20.
• (Note: This isn't allowed for your November word count.)

Plus, donating on Epic Giving Day gets you another bonus. In addition to your usual thank-you gifts, we’ll give away prizes—like a Kindle Fire; signed NaNo-novels; and writing software from Scrivener, Storyist, and Aeon Timeline—all day on Twitter. (See the full list of prizes on the campaign page.) And to be eligible, all you have to do is give.

Why contribute? We'll let über-donor Scott Westerfeld tell you:

We all want to see the novel flourish in the future, right? We want young people to understand the form, to embrace its history and its future, and to continue the mad practice of creating these absurdly long, imperfect strings of text.

We all want this.

So click here to read more about the YWP and to donate. Then tell your friends to do the same.

Please support us on Epic Giving Day. It’s only 24 hours, but it means the world to our future.

P.S. If you can’t donate monetarily, consider giving some epic energy toward plugging the campaign on social media. That helps, too!

Nanowrimo 2011 Is Officially Over And NaBloPoMo Begins Again

Woo hoo for Sagezilla and Du-Jay who collaborated on a novel for Nanowrimo's youth division and not only won, but far surpassed their initial age appropriate word count goal!   This is their 3rd collaboration and I'm so proud of them.    

It was a bittersweet year for me.   After 4 wins in a row, I began another novel in my rune series and quickly realized that my blog commitments, freelance, the kids, and my daily work load would prevent me from also finishing 50,000 words in 30 days this year.    So, I changed over to NaBloPoMo at BlogHer, also a writing based, noble challenge, but much more attainable this year.   As opposed to NaNoWriMo (national novel writers month) this one is (national blog posting month) I've agreed to post daily throughout November and am in again for December, too.    That's going much better than my poor novel that's been back burnered to simmer for a while.

I've not only posted daily, but finished November with a whopping SIXTY SIX blog posts at ChiIL Mama.com.   All posts are listed chronologically, by month and alphabetically, by key words, at the bottom of the blog.

So here's to another round of NaBloPoMo in December.   Let the games begin.