The most important thing is to remove the battery and not turn on the machine until you know for certain that it's 100% dry, inside and out. It sounds like it's a little late for that, but don't give up quite yet.
Some liquids are more corrosive than others. Personally, I have a policy of only dumping water on my electronics. If you just spilled water on it, you might be in luck. If it was coffee, or soda pop, your chances just got significantly worse. The two computers I've known of that encountered Gatorade and Ramen, respectively, didn't survive.
About a year ago, I spilled a large glass of water (20 oz or so) on my laptop while it was running, the day before a business trip. I completely dismantled it and let it dry for a week while I was gone on the trip. I've heard of other people burying waterlogged electronics in a bucket of rice or a large pile of silica gel packets to suck the extra moisture out of the internals. If you do this, I'd suggest that you put the laptop (or its components) into a well-sealed cloth bag to keep the rice or silica gel from infiltrating your hardware.
Several years ago, I also had a cell phone that took a swim, and it still didn't work after I had dismantled it and dried it out for a week (this was before I knew of the rice/silica gel trick). I filed a claim with the insurance company and bought a new phone. About a month after the first phone got wet, I was fiddling with the old phone again--and not only did it turn on, but it had absolutely nothing wrong with it (aside from the buggy software, but that wasn't the water's fault).
