[ INO50000 Certified ]Certified Winner: Authors of web sites bearing a matching, custom-designed, unaltered version of this image have been confirmed as "Winners" of the third-annual National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) under INO50000™ guidelines — an independent, unofficial, all-in-fun auditing standard set by this site (Journalers NaNoWriMo). This means that the individual named successfully completed a 50,000-word fiction novel within 30 days — during the month of November 2001 — under the limited guidelines, and in the spirit, of NaNoWriMo.

Certified NaNos: The few, the proud... the proven novelists.

Total: 1,689,351 INO50000™ Certified Words

Getting Certified: How you can get a cheesy little JPEG of your own.

  1. Finish your novel. Or at least, the first 50,000 words of it.
  2. Take a shower.
  3. E-mail it to us by the deadline and in the format specified below.
  4. Do a little dance of joy.
  5. When you get your graphic, put it on your web page.

INO50000™ Standards: The unavoidable, but wholly reasonable, rules.

The INO50000™ Certification Standard —which is completely different from, and not at all modeled after, the International Organization for Standards' highly-respected ISO9000 specification — requires that authors meet the following criteria:

From NaNoWriMo:

  • The novel was created primarily during the month of November 2001, with or without the use of outlines or notes. Completions of works in progress or partially-completed chapters, however, are "punishable by death."*
  • The novel was created by a single individual. Products of writing teams or creative collaboration are "the sort of collectivist spirit got the Soviet Empire where it is today" and thus also not allowed.
  • The novel is essentially a work of fiction in prose — not documentary, autobiography, poetry, or screenplays. NaNoWriMo is "exclusively committed to the timely production of crappy novels. Wait and write your crappy screenplay in December."
  • The novel cannot be a single word repeated 50,000 times.

From Journalers NaNoWriMo:

  • The novel must be submitted via e-mail as a single plain-text document, uncompressed (.txt, not .zip, .sit, et cetera), as an e-mail attachment (not Base-64 or otherwise encoded text) to ino50000@lightfantastic.org.
  • The novel must be received by midnight, Nov. 30, 2001, Hawaii Standard Time. This is, in fact, 5 a.m. on Dec. 1, 2001 Eastern Standard Time, or 2 a.m. in California (NaNoWriMo Headquarters), providing a very large cushion for Windows crashes and finicky mail servers. You can, of course, submit your novel early, or incomplete — provided you've passed the 50,000 word mark.
  • You must be an online diarist, journaler, or personal blogger. That is, someone who — previous to NaNoWriMo —maintained a personal website containing periodic, primarily autobiographic writing. (The graphic wouldn't be too useful to people without websites, anyway.) You will need to include the URL to your diary, journal, or weblog as part of your e-mail submission.
  • You must also include in your e-mail your real or pen name and geographic location (city, state or province, country). In case of delay or technical difficulties, preference will be given to official "NaNoWriMo Team 2001" members, so please provide the information as it appears on the NaNoWriMo site.
  • You will have your name, location, and certified word count listed on this page, whether or not you choose to display the graphic.

Your Assurances:

  • INO50000 Certification™ is open to anyone (with a web journal or 'blog), including unlisted, free-range and rebel NaNos.
  • Word counts will all be done on a single Dell 4100 1.2GHz workstation via the stock Word Count feature of Microsoft Word 2001. This feature — by virtue of being a Microsoft product — includes a wide margin of error in your favor. Chapter breaks, odd symbols, and who knows what else are all counted as words. Bonus!
  • Your novel will not be archived, distributed, or even read. After the Word Count is completed, it will be deleted with a vengance. Your multi-million dollar publishing contract will not be threatened!
  • If you are not certified, either because you missed the cutoff or your novel fell short, you are still cool. In fact, you are cooler than the people (okay, person) running this program, who very likely barely made it halfway.

* Enforcement of NaNoWriMo Death Clause will be handled by an independent agency.