And the final count is…

January 14, 2011 at 8:09 pm (Book Collection) (, , , , )

3,320 books!!!

Take a moment to pat yourself on the back, we did an awesome job, Pittsburgh!

It would have been great to get to 5,000, but let me tell you, I’m not sure 5,000 books would have fit in my house.  Take a look at the 74 boxes stacked in my kitchen awaiting pick up:

UPS came and picked the books up yesterday, so they’re off to Better World Books to be counted and sorted.  NaNoWriMo has yet to announce the book drive winners as far as I know (and I would hope they’d let all of us coordinators know!), but I’ll let you know if we win anything.

Once again I wanted to thank all my wonderful, wonderful volunteers. Jenn, Bryon, Casey, Stevie, Mike, and everyone else, you were amazing!

Go Pittsburgh!

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We’re almost there!

December 11, 2010 at 11:17 pm (Book Collection) (, , , )

Well, it appears I didn’t quite understand what we could and could not count toward our book total.  That means I was able to add 600+ books to the count that had previously been sitting in my basement.  Adding those to the hundreds of books the Monroeville Wrimos collected, WE’RE ONLY 160 BOOKS AWAY FROM 3,000!!!

Tomorrow, I’ll be picking up books from another wonderful Wrimo and one of my husband’s coworkers.  I imagine those two pick ups will put us over the 3,000 mark!  And that’s before we count probably two more boxes from another of my husband’s coworkers, plus the books that are still at three of the drop off locations.

If you have any last books you’d like to donate, you’ve still got a few more days, so hurry up and get them donated!

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How many books on the table?

December 8, 2010 at 10:18 am (Book Collection, Volunteers) (, , , , )

Guess what? Pop City wrote an article about us! Woohoo!

Guess what else?  How many books are in this picture?

Closest guess gets a cookie!  If you get the number exactly right you get two cookies!

We are trucking right along with the book drive, and I think we’ve got at least 2,000 books so far, though I haven’t had a chance to sort them all and count them.  Even if we don’t make 5,000, we can definitely make 3,000, so keep book driving, Wrimos!

Remember, we’ve got one whole week left, so let’s make it count!

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A tour of book driving central

December 1, 2010 at 5:13 pm (Book Collection) (, , , )

Well, Pittsburgh, Wrimos, we’ve got 2 weeks left in our book driving adventure!  As you can with the count above, we’ve got more than 1,000 books so far!  Now that we don’t have our silly novels to hold us back, we can do even more book driving!!!!

We didn’t quite make our 2,500 for 25,000 goal, but I am STILL working through all the boxes, so I bet we have about 1,500 books total!

You can see that even my dogs are helping me out:

And here are all the boxes and boxes of books that piled up in my living room (my piano was actually buried at one point):

My basement is now quite full of books, but it’s hungry for MAOR!!  So please go to the Template page and use that template email to email all your friends and ask them to clean out their book shelves!  Post on Facebook, Twitter (you can find me @kellylynnthomas), MySpace, whatever you crazy kids are using these days.

If you’ve got quite a few books, send me a tweet or email at narrativeintheblog@gmail.com to arrange a pick up!

P.S. I totally failed Nanowrimo.  Oh well!

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2,500 books for 25,000 words

November 12, 2010 at 10:25 pm (Book Collection) (, , )

November 15, the halfway point of our favorite month, is quickly approaching.  In fact, it’s only 3 days away!

By the 15th, we should all have 25,000 words written.  (I’ve got a looong way to go to catch up.)

In celebration of NaNoWriMo’s halfway point, let’s get our book drive to its halfway point.  That means we need to collect 2,500 books by Nov. 15.  Do you think we can do it?  I do!!!!  (Remember, no other city’s football team has won six Super Bowls…)

I am still working my way through the boxes and boxes and boxes of books in my living room and car, but I estimate we’ve got at least 1,000 so far.  That means we only need 1,500 more to hit this goal.  We can totally do it, and this is how:

  • Clean out your bookshelves.  You know those books you got for Christmas and your birthday that were kinda okay but that you’ll never read again? Donate those.
  • Get books from your friends, family and coworkers.
  • Contact every single person you know.  Use the email template on the Fliers and Templates page to email every single person you know.  Post on Facebook and Twitter and ask for books.
  • Ask your nearest book seller to donate any overstock books or other books that she can’t sell.

Gather all of these up by Monday (the 15th) and bring them to Kiva Han on S. Craig St. in Oakland (right across the street from the Carnegie Art Museum).  You’ll be rewarded for all your hard work with:

  • 1+ books donated: a cookie!
  • 3+ books donated: a cookie and a comic book!
  • 25+ books donated: a cookie and two comic books and a custom “2,500 for 25,000” web badge (you pick the size)

Just to be clear, I’m not talking graphic novel length comics.  These are the 32-page superhero kind.  I’ve got lots of Marvel and some D.C. books that feature some of your favorite superheros!  You can do what you want with these.  You can read them, save them in plastic sleeves, or do something more creative!  And who knows, I might have a special prize for the top donor!  Maybe, maybe!

What are you waiting for? Get book driving!!!

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Spread the book driving word

October 31, 2010 at 2:09 pm (Book Collection) (, , , , , )

Fellow Pittsburgh Wrimos, we’re on the cusp of our great literary adventure through November!

That means late nights of coffee-fueled writing mania, plot holes bigger than the Liberty Tunnel, characters that won’t leave you alone, and the Great Pittsburgh NaNoWriMo Book Drive!  So far, we have collected about 250 books of our goal of 5,000.  We’re doing great so far, and I expect our book collecting volume to increase as we head into Nano month.  The book drive runs until December 15, so we have a little bit more time to reach our 5,000 book goal than we do our 50,000 word goal!

If we break it down into Nano terms, we have 45 days to collect 5,000 books.  That means we need to collect 112 books per day to meet our goal.  Compared to 1,667 words per day, that seems like a piece of cake, right?

And it will be, with your help!  Even if you can only hang one flier, that’s a bunch more people that will learn about the book drive that maybe otherwise wouldn’t have heard about it.  If each of us hangs just one flier, we can post nearly 1,500 fliers throughout Pittsburgh.  If 10 people see each flier, 15,000 people will hear about the drive.  Only 33% of them need to donate one book for us to meet our goal.

So head on over to Fliers, print one out and hang it up at your favorite hangout before you dive into your latest novel!  Once you’ve done that, copy and paste the template email on the same page into a blank email and send it to everyone on your email list.

Happy Noveling, Pittsburgh!

-Kelly

P.S. You can subscribe to this blog via email or RSS in order to stay totally up to date on book drive news.

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Books, books and more books!

October 23, 2010 at 7:15 pm (Book Collection) (, , , )


The 2010 Great Pittsburgh NaNoWriMo Book Drive is over. Check back in October 2011 for the 2011 book drive.

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Volunteers needed!

October 22, 2010 at 1:09 am (Volunteers) (, , , )

Hello Steel City Wrimos!  I’m Kelly, and National Novel Writing Month needs your help!

For the first time, NaNoWriMo is holding a great book drive to help raise funds for NaNoWriMo and the Young Writers Program–which helps out kids in 30 schools across our beautiful state of Pennsylvania.  The goal is for each region to raise 3,000 books, which will then by sold by Better World Books, and the proceeds donated to National Novel Writing Month.

But we can do better.  We can do 5,000.

But I, your Great NaNoWriMo Book Drive coordinator, cannot do it alone.  I need you, the awesomely awesome Wrimos of our fair City of Steel, to help out. (To clarify, the book drive is great, I’m not.^^)

Here’s what I need:

  • People to manage drop off locations.
  • People to hand fliers in their offices, schools, and favorite businesses.
  • People to email their friends, family, and coworkers to request book donations.
  • People to collect books at write ins and other Nano events (I can’t be at all of them!).
  • PEOPLE TO DONATE BOOKS!

I will be adding fliers, email templates and other goodies to help you help NaNoWriMo over the next few days.  If you’d like to help out in a way I haven’t listed here, let me know!  Please leave me a comment if you’d like to help, email me at narrativeintheblog@gmail.com (this is my public email for my blog), or shoot me a Nano Mail (here’s my profile).

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