There are quite a few sponsored freebies for validated winners, so don't forget to validate your wordcount once you have reached 50,000 words! My two favorites that I will likely be redeeming are Lulu.com's free hardcover book and CreateSpace's two free paperback copies.

To validate, select "Validate My Novel" from the "My NaNoWriMo" drop down menu. This will bring up a simple form. Open your document that has your novel in it, select all, copy (ctrl-C usually), and paste it into the form (ctrl-V usually). Submit and enjoy your PDF certificate! You must validate before midnight December 1st to be a validated winner. You can tell that it succeeded because your wordcount bar will turn from green to purple.

If you wrote your novel by hand, you can use the lorem ipsum generator to create the words to use to validate.

Don't forget to RSVP to our fun Thank Goodness It's Over pot-luck lunch party so you can celebrate with your fellow writers (you don't need to win to come have fun--everyone is a winner at the party)!

P.S. Validate early so you can avoid the end-of-the-month crunch that can slow down nano's servers. Once you've validated, you can continue to write and update your wordcount the normal way.

This post (buried somewhat in the thread) reveals updated submission dates for the Lulu offers:

• Dec. 8 - Submissions for Accelerator program closes
• Dec. 31 - Deadline for free manuscript review
• Feb. 14 Deadline for Free Hardcover

The Wrimo Accelerator program sounds interesting (probably a long shot to be one of the ten selected), though it is likely more of a publicity stunt than a useful career boost; still, every little writing/publishing credit might be helpful...

Dear Tim, I notice that you still have the green bar and not the purple valadation bar. Did you forget to Validate?

catatone1 wrote:Dear Tim, I notice that you still have the green bar and not the purple valadation bar. Did you forget to Validate?

Actually, I am *so* close to reaching "The End" (I'm not quite there) that I thought I would wait to reach it before validating. I don't always do that (I usually don't), but this year I think that I have the chance to, so just call me a sentimentalist. :-)

Thanks for the helpful links. I need to look into the Acelerator program, I don't even know what thatis.