The National Novel Writing Month (Na-No-Wri-Mo or simply, NaNoWriMo) is set to kick off in 4 days time. There’s a kick-off party for folks here in St Louis on Sunday 29th, in the St Louis Bread Co in Clayton (10 S Central Ave, St Louis, MO). For those coming, there’s parking at Maryland and Central, with a short walk down Central to get to to party. I cant wait!

For the last few years I have provided a set of motivating progress meter / graph widgets for people to put on their websites. This year is slightly different. I contacted the technical folks at NaNoWriMo.org to let them know that I wanted to donate the code to their cause. They will officially be hosting the widgets this year.

Chris Baty, founder of NaNoWriMo, posted an article “Parties and more” in the “Breaking News” section of the site. At the end he wrote:ps: We’re a day away from posting a few items created by the extraordinary Paul Hawke that will freak your brain. But Russ told me not to talk about them yet, so I can’t. Really. Not even a hint (cough, beautiful NaNoWriMo widgets, cough). Ahem.In an email to me, earlier in the day, he wrote:Dear Paul,

First off, I’m so sorry it’s taken me approximately four years to get back to your original email. I’ve been meaning to write you forever to thank you for all the great work you’ve done for NaNoWriMo participants in the form of your beautiful, simple, and helpful widgets. They’re awesome and motivating as all get-out, and I nearly peed when I just saw this year’s batch that we’ll be hosting on the NaNoWriMo site. So great!

Would you mind sending me your mailing address, so we can send you a few tokens of our esteem?

And thanks again, Paul! You rock!

ChrisI guess this is my famous “15 minutes of fame”, and I can slide into utter obscurity once its over? I’m bowled over, boggled, that I’ve registered on his radar - the founder of Nanowrimo. Wow.