Dear Novelist,

It is our supreme pleasure to inform you that our internationally renowned team of word-counting robots have completed their judicious assessment of your manuscript, and have passed on this final, binding decision:

Winner Icon

Winner.

Wow. You've really done it this time, writer. Where the vast majority of National Novel Writing Month participants abandoned ship at some point in the journey, you bravely persevered, continuing your literary quest in the face of ridiculously long odds.

In one month, you have written more fiction than most people create in a lifetime. You have dared to dream big, to throw long, to say: "Enough of the self-critical crap, and the hemming and hawing. This time I'm going for it."

And you pulled it off with aplomb. In just four weeks, you built vast worlds and set them in motion. You created characters; quirky, interesting, passionate souls with lives and loves and ambitions as great as yours.

And most admirably, you managed to find time to do it all while juggling the demands of work, school, friends and family. Most people barely have the strength to make it through dinner at the end of a tough day. You dug deep, and found the energy and resolve to make wild, deliciously imperfect art in the midst of a horribly hectic life.

It's an amazing accomplishment, and we're proud of you for seeing it through.

Before we let you head off to your celebration (or nap, as the case may be), we have some NaNoWriMo Winners' booty to share with you.

The first is a small winner's icon, meant to be posted on a website or blog. It was designed this year by artist Claire Robertson. You can find the icon, and instructions for downloading it here.

Since many people don't have a website to call their own, we also commissioned an official NaNoWriMo 2003 winner's certificate, which you can download and print out. It was drawn by illustrator Lindy Groening, and can be downloaded here.

And that's about it. It's been an unforgettable month, and we've been very glad to have you with us.

With warm regards (and much applause and whistling),

Chris Baty
Director, NaNoWriMo


Script

For our winner icon this year, we asked artist Claire Robertson to imagine life as it might have been all the way back in 1999, when NaNoWriMo began. From archaeological records, we understand the late '90s to have been a period of swashbuckling derring-do, where pirates battled bloodthirsty aquatic woolly mammoths for control of the profitable oceanic trade routes.

This rakish icon, hearkening back to those wild, dot-matrixy days, can be posted on a website or blog to help spread the word of your formidable NaNoWriMo victory.

Once you've downloaded the file and put it in your website directory, you can use HTML such as the following to include it on your pages:

 

 

When we asked illustrator Lindy Groening to design this year's winner's certificate, our only request was to give us something classy. And fun. Preferably with at least one small, flying baby on it.

After downloading it, you'll just need to break out your favorite calligraphy quill and customize it with your name. Then post it in a very prominent place, as a constant reminder of the righteous creative gifts you possess. (Hanging the certificate in a high-traffic area will also help the groupies know where to find you.)

Download your NaNoWriMo 2003 winner's certificate using the link below. If you have Adobe Acrobat Reader installed, you can just click the link to download and print from your browser. To download the certificate to your hard drive for later viewing and printing, use your browser's "Save Link Location As..." (or "Save Target As") feature: PC users can right-click on the link to bring up a menu, and Mac users can just hold down the mouse button over the link.

(I also downloaded that very nice certificate for framing.)

Congratulations, novelist!