Okay, this isn't exactly like any other advertisement that you're going to see.
The wind-up is starting on October 1st with the reset of the writer's forums, and the starting bell rings at the first minutes of November 1st, 2009.
The goal is quite simple. 50,000 words in 30 days, November 1st to November 30th.
The event is called National Novel Writing Month. Also called NaNoWriMo. I have participated the last two years. I won in '07 with a novel called Artifacts and I lost last year with a novel called The Stilton Incidents due to technical difficulties. I lost internet access completely just prior to Thanksgiving weekend and could not log on to the site to verify my word count. *sigh* Oh well.
Anyway, I'm participating again this year, though I don't have a title or a plot yet.
NaNoWriMo Website
It's a lot of fun.
Kendra Padraig