Monday, November 01, 2010

Day 1 - Trials and tribulations

Well, any of you who are frequent visitors to the NaNoWriMo website know it's down. Down something *fierce*. This wasn't as much of a problem last year, but we are experiencing record-breaking totals... at one point, we had over 16,000 people online at once.

It's just as frustrating for us as it is for you. The good news is, the tech team is on it,and working hard to get things back on track. Specialists have been called in, and things will work. We promise! In the mean time, write your novels, and hit that word count goal! I did a 15 minute word war with NaNoLanta and got 687 - I think I can manage to get 1667 today. It's funny, you'd think I'd write when the sites are down, but I worry so much about catching up on modding I don't. I write better when I don't have 50-something posts in the abuse queue. ;)

I did get a rousing good first page or so on my novel. An impressive opening scene with water knocking over secret service agents. I think we've got something here. :)

I got on the site long enough to post an excerpt. I also have it on very good authority that Liquid Story Binder will again be offered at a discount this November. Check it out from my sidebar over there... it's what I use to write my novels, and I can't sing its praises enough. Super flexible, bit of a learning curve, but worth taking the time for. It'll adjust itself to how YOU work - it doesn't require you to change how you do things.

5 comments:

Heather In Progress said...

Why does this happen every year, though? Shouldn't they know the site will be overloaded the first few days and do something to help it handle the traffic? I don't know anything about computers or the internet, but it seems like they ought to be able to prepare a little more.

(By the way, my word verification is "minon." Need any henchpersons?)

Kate said...

We were too busy trying to get on the site,worrying about it, and noveling to post rude comments! ;)

Heather Dudley said...

Two reasons, Heather:

1) Funding. :) We grow every single year. Traditionally, only 2/3 of our total number of participants sign in by the 1st - and we've already hit 166,000 this year. We scaled up massively last year - but it just wasn't enough. We're expecting at least 40k more.

2) You guys always find a way to surprise the HELL out of us. It's always something different. :) this year, the databases are completely overloaded. We have *19* servers on - but it's just not enough!

Our record for participants online at once last year was something like 8 or 9k - this year, we've topped 17k several times. AT ONCE. That's over 17,000 people, all trying to upload their novels, update their profiles, changing profiles, opening 32 tabs (guilty) and reflexively refreshing.

No matter what we do to prepare, the site proves that we don't know as much as we think we do. ;)

Heather In Progress said...

Thanks for your answer, Other-Heather! I truly wasn't trying to be rude and I'm sorry if it came across that way (to you or your friend that posted). I just wanted to understand how it worked (or, rather, didn't! heh).

Heather Dudley said...

No, not at all! I didn't think it came across as rude, personally. ;) And yes, I think I do need henchpersons. I just had one appear in my novel unheralded.