There was a cool segment on our local NPR station yesterday; you can listen to it here:
http://www.capradio.org/programs/insight/default.aspx?showid=2630&programid=10 "Novel idea During the month of November more than 80,000 people have attempted to write a complete novel in 30 days. You’ll hear from Chris Batey, the founder of National Novel Writing Month, and a Dixon man who has participated in the event five times."
There was also a woman from Merced who has participated a couple of times.