Good thing I have the whole summer off!
NaNoWriMo
50% means it’s time for a box castle
My students have been working on their novels for a couple weeks now, and as November 15 approaches, they know it’s time to get to 50% of their word goal. When they cross that halfway line, they choose a NaNoWriMo button to wear proudly on their hoodie:
But many of us are starting to feel like we’re running out of steam. The story we were so excited about in October is suddenly boring and annoying, and we need some inspiration. According to writer and pep-talker Robyn Schneider, it’s time for a box castle:
We don’t have room in our classroom for cardboard boxes, blankets and pillows, but we can take Robyn’s advice that a change in location can help vanquish our suck dragons and move us into another great scene in our novels. And we know that just one great scene can lead to another and to another…
So we move outside, or we curl up on carpet squares, or we just roll over for a different view of the classroom. And of course we string up lights, because it isn’t a box castle without lights.
How do you celebrate that magical 50%? And what is your favorite version of a box castle? Where do you go when you need a change of writing scenery?
Do you speak NaNoWriMo?
Today is November 1st, which means WriMos all over the world are silencing inner editors, tackling plot bunnies, vanquishing suck dragons, building box castles, pantsing or plotting, striving for that ever elusive word goal and the bragging rights of winning as they NaNo the night away in Write-Ins with fellow WriMos. They rely on caffeine, sugary snacks (thank you, Halloween), the Dare Machine, Pep Talks, fellow WriMos (both online and in person), Word Wars, NaNo Stats, and an ever growing online community of WriMoVloggers.
Do you speak NaNoWriMo, or did I lose you at “plot bunnies”? Either way, you are sure to be bombarded with NaNoVocab, as your WriMo friends clutter your Twitter/Facebook/Instagram feeds with their daily word goals, #amwriting, word count celebrations, and woe-is-me-I-didn’t-have-time-to-write-today sob stories. To help you understand all things NaNo this month (and possibly entice you to join), I offer you a glossary of NaNoVocab:
NaNoWriMo: the vision that started it all, NaNoWriMo is short for National Novel Writing Month, a challenge to writers everywhere to pen 50,000 words of the first draft of a novel in the month of November. The student version from the Young Writers Program allows students to choose their own word goal and write towards it in November.
NaNo: verb; to participate in NaNoWriMo; to write; as in, Did you NaNo today? How much NaNo-ing did you do over the weekend?
WriMo: noun; person who participates in NaNoWriMo; as in, Are you a WriMo? Did you see all those WriMos in Starbucks?
Word Goal: noun; the total number of words a WriMo will try to write in November; also the number of words a WriMo needs to write each day in November. Not to be confused with a complete draft of a novel, a word goal is simply a target. As experienced WriMos know, reaching the magical 50,000 words on November 30 does not give one a complete draft of a novel, especially if one reaches 50,000 words right in the middle of a sentence.
Day 1 of NaNoWriMo and this student is well on her way to winning!
Pantser: noun; person who writes without planning or plotting ahead of time; as in, Are you a WriMo pantser? Do you write by the seat of your pants? Pants: verb; to write without a plan. Due to the tight time frame of NaNoWriMo, pantsers can learn from plotters (below) so that when they get writer’s block, they can go back to their plan for inspiration.
Plotter: noun; person who outlines, plots, and plans his/her novel before writing it; as in, I outlined my entire novel, but it took a turn I didn’t expect, and now I have to start all over, plot it again, and start writing again. I’ll never win! Due to the tight time frame of NaNoWriMo, plotters can learn from pantsers to just write from their guts without needing to follow a plan.
Winner: noun; one who reaches 50,000 words by midnight on November 30; NaNoWinners receive no prizes, but they do earn bragging rights forever (or at least until the next November, when everyone’s word count is reset to 0). Participants in the Young Writers Program who reach their self-determined word count goals by November 30 are also crowned winners, and along with bragging rights, they earn five free copies of their novel published through CreateSpace, and they may (like some of my students) sell them on Amazon. Of course, this means these young writers must also complete, revise, and edit their novels for publication.
NaNoWriMo winners, 2011.
Novels published by some of my 8th grade students.
Inner Editor: noun; often the bane of every writer’s existence, our inner editor can lead to writer’s block, as it sits on our shoulders and nags us, pointing out every mistake we make, every awkward sentence, every plot hole and inconsistency. While an inner editor really comes in handy in the revision and proofreading phase of writing, we need to silence that nag during the rough draft phase. Since we need to write a lot (and fast) in order to win by November 30, we need to let go of that need to write perfectly and beautifully, and heed the wise advice of novelist John Green, who says, “NaNoWriMo gives me permission to suck.” Yes, get those English teachers off your back, silence your inner editor, and write that sucky first draft! Plenty of time to entertain that inner editor after you reach your goal on November 30.
Box Castle: noun; cozy place to curl up with your writing; place of WriMo inspiration; cardboard box or table+blanket fort or pillows in your closet. Inspired by NaNoWriMo Pep Talker Robyn Schneider, your box castle just might get you past the mid-way point in November when you aren’t quite to the mid-way point in your word count. My students were inspired to write in their classroom version of box castles:
Plot Bunnies: noun; story ideas that invade your brain and must be written into your novel. Ignored plot bunnies will badger you until you do include them. While they may seem to be bad ideas, plot bunnies can benefit the WriMo because (1) they will add to your word count, and (2) they can surprise you by breathing new life and unexpected twists into your story.
Suck Dragons: noun; issues in your story that get in the way of its success, such as lack of plot (there is no problem for your protagonist to solve) or structure issues (such as boring scenes or pacing problems). WriMos facing writer’s block can break through it by going back and vanquishing suck dragons from earlier in their draft.
WriMoVloggers: noun; WriMos who vlog (a.k.a., video blog, or make YouTube videos) about NaNoWriMo. Since writing is very hard work, many WriMos discover that it’s much more fun to make videos about writing than to do the actual writing. The online community of WriMos on YouTube is an enthusiastic, devoted, and very silly group of vloggers (and procrastinators) who are available to inspire, motivate, and chastise you to get back to your writing instead of wasting time watching videos on YouTube.
There is no shortage of tips from NaNoWriMo Vloggers.
Write-Ins: noun; community events where WriMos gather together to work on their novels. Held in coffee shops, bookstores, gymnasiums and basements, Write-Ins offer writers the chance to write with other writers, but often lead to more community building, game playing, coffee drinking, and plot planning than actual writing. While writing may be a solitary, lonely endeavor, we often get more writing done when we are alone. But, hey, even writers need a break. And friends. And fun. So get thee to a Write-In!
Word Wars: noun; timed writing events that challenge writers to write more words than another WriMo in a brief, timed race. While Word Wars may not produce the best writing, the desire to beat an opponent can blast a writer out of writer’s block and back into the game of writing. Word Wars may happen face-to-face during a Write-In, but more often they take place online via chat rooms or Twitter.
Dare Machine: noun; tool to combat writer’s block. The Dare Machine dares writers to incorporate random plot/character/setting/conflict suggestions into their novel. Similar to plot bunnies, the dares might be ridiculous suggestions that don’t make any sense in one’s story (e.g. “include a dog who steals underwear,” or “have someone eat poisoned food”), but they can also take a WriMo’s story on an unexpected path that leads to an actual plot goldmine.
NaNo Stats: noun; online graph of progress toward one’s word goal. Plot, character development, and conflicts may be central to the writing of a novel, but during NaNoWriMo it’s all about writing 1,667 words per day to reach the magical 50,000 by the end of the month. To help motivate WriMos, the NaNoWriMo sites offer visual tracking of each writer’s progress. And sometimes updating one’s word count and seeing that bar graph move up is the only thing keeping us in our chairs (or box castles) and writing.
So there you go. Now when your friends post #amwriting and over-share their NaNo progress, you can reply with the vocabulary of someone inside the NaNo circle of WriMos. Or you can hide them from your feed until December 1st. We understand. Really, we do.
Want to know more about NaNoWriMo? Check out:
- NaNoWriMo for adults: 50,000 words in a month, baby!
- Young Writers Program of NaNoWriMo: age-appropriate word goals for students.
- NaNoWriMo for educators: tips and tricks for bringing NaNoWriMo to your classroom.
- Talks with Teachers podcast (#75) about NaNoWriMo.
Happy NaNo-ing, all you WriMos!
It’s beginning to look a lot like #NaNoWriMo!
The first time I introduced National Novel Writing Month (a.k.a. NaNoWriMo) to my 8th graders, I was terrified. One of my teacher friends had said, “They’ll run screaming from the classroom in tears!”
Some students did later confess to a brief moment of panic (“I almost lost my lunch!”), but the end result was resoundingly the most powerful and successful writing project I have ever seen in my classroom. So before you click away in fear at the words “novel writing,” let me share what NaNoWriMo is and why you should offer your students this literary challenge.
- what it is: according to the Young Writers Program, NaNoWriMo is “a fun, seat-of-your-pants writing event where the challenge is to complete an entire novel in just 30 days. For one month, you get to lock away your inner editor, let your imagination take over, and just create!” According to me, 8th grade English teacher, NaNoWriMo is the best writing project I have ever seen my students tackle, and it includes writing process, community, strategies, revision, and publishing. So how does NaNoWriMo turn students into enthusiastic writers?
- challenge: we know that challenging our students to aim high can motivate and inspire them, but who would think challenging them to write a novel in a month wouldn’t just terrify them? I don’t think my typical student dreams of writing a novel, but here’s what I discovered: given a meaningful challenge, plus resources, support and lots of time to write, students will write with enthusiasm.
- student ownership: my students do their best writing when they own the genre, topic and final product. With NaNoWriMo, students write the stories of their choice. Often they mimic the books that they love to read: dystopian worlds, wizard fantasies, historical fiction, teen romance, zombie gore. With guidance, they choose a challenging yet attainable word goal, allowing each student to be successful while tackling a significant piece of writing. I have spent many years devising clever projects to motivate my students to write, but for the first time in my career students came to class begging, “Can we please start writing now?”
- online support: my students join the online NaNoWriMo writing community, where they create their own author page, upload a book cover they have designed themselves, share their book’s title, genre, summary and an excerpt, connect with other young writers, compete in “word wars,” track their daily progress towards their goals, and read tips from published authors. As they encounter the inevitable writer’s block, they learn to jump to the writing community for productive distractions and genuine writing help. Bonus: the online NaNo community serves as a perfect avenue for teaching (and practicing) digital citizenship.
- publication: one of the most exciting aspects of the Young Writers Program is that
students who successfully make it to their writing goal by November 30 are rewarded with the opportunity to publish their novel, receive five copies for free, and sell their novels on Amazon. (See my own students’ novels for sale here.) But there’s no need to wait until the month is over to start publishing. We publish our work in a variety of ways:
- sharing one great line on a class bulletin board
- posting a proud excerpt on the NaNoWriMo site
- exchanging excerpts in a shared Google Doc
- Author’s Chair at the end of class: reading aloud from our works-in-progress
- sharing our work with the community: our local bookstore hosts Author Nights for students who want to read aloud from their completed novels
- Common Core aligned: while “Common Core aligned” doesn’t really make my heart sing, the reality is that most of us must use curriculum that meets certain standards. Fortunately, the folks at the Young Writers Program provide detailed documentation of how NaNoWriMo does align with Common Core Standards, so if your boss, school board, community members or parents question the value of “30 days of literary abandon,” you’ve got back-up.
- confidence and pride: I’m certain that the best way to build our students’ self-esteem is to give them opportunities to struggle, work through difficulties, and find their own voices in the process. My students validated this in their enthusiastic responses to the NaNoWriMo project. My favorite comes from Jessie, a girl who had been labeled below grade level in her reading and writing skills, and who was not successfully engaged in her own education:
“I just think this whole thing about writing a novel is really cool. It made me think that a lot of things could be possible in the world. I mean I am thirteen years old and I just wrote my own dang novel! How cool is that? I think it is honestly amazing. I loved the writing time and I wish it wasn’t over!” -Jessie, 13
The actual writing of the novels starts on November 1, but free curriculum provided by the Young Writers Program of NaNoWriMo makes it easy for teachers to devote weeks (even a couple months) of valuable class time to the project. Go here to get started, and check out my own NaNoTeacher site for help bringing this awesome writing experience to your students.
Stay tuned over the next couple months for a few more posts on the NaNoWriMo project: getting your classroom ready, getting your students ready, assessing their work, and publishing. And please share your own NaNoWriMo stories below!
(originally published on edutopia.org)
Assessing your WriMos
If your students are feverishly writing novels as fast their little fingers can fly across the keyboards, anxious to meet their NaNoWriMo word goals by the end of November, you may be wondering how best to assess their work during this glorious month of literary abandon. Since it may be unrealistic for you to read the complete texts of their novels (I have 98 students writing an average of 15,000 words each, so I don’t plan to read them all cover to cover), I offer you these more realistic assessments:
- have them choose one beautiful line from their writing to be shared publicly (on a blog, on a bulletin board, etc.). If you’d like to make it a more specific assessment, direct them to choose a line with a particularly effective metaphor or powerful imagery.
- give them a grade for making it to their individual goals by November 30. If they don’t make it, give them the percentage that they do achieve. Consider rewarding students who choose but don’t quite make it to an unusually high goal.
- once November is over, have students pull one-two page excerpts that demonstrate certain aspects of narrative writing: dialogue, character development, setting description, conflict, etc., and give them directions for revising those excerpts. Imagine the joy of grading just those short pieces that they have had time to fully polish, rather than tackling pages and pages that they won’t have time to revise.
- assign literary analysis of their own writing. My students have done some work analyzing why an author chose certain words or created certain characters; think of how powerful it would be for them to write analysis of their own novels. These shorter pieces would also be great on a blog so that students can respond to one another’s work.
- add public speaking to the experience. Our local bookstore hosted my students as visiting authors, and the work they did to prepare for that event was an assignment worthy of its own grade. They wrote an introduction of their novels, including tit
le, genre, basic set up and themes; then they wrote an introduction of the excerpt so that the audience would understand it in context; and then they practiced reading aloud so that their work could be appreciated. The evening event was listed by many of my students as one of their favorite parts of the project, even though most of them said they were terrified of speaking in public. - extensions of the NaNoWriMo experience could include creating book trailers for their novels; book jackets with author information and critics’ quotes; posters with images and quotes from the text; and of course polishing their novels so they can take advantage of the free publication offered to them from CreateSpace.
The month-long journey of writing a lengthy story is valuable all by itself. Don’t work yourself too hard or put unnecessary stress on your students by trying to evaluate too much of what they have written. Focus on the beauty of smaller pieces and celebrate your students’ accomplishments as NaNoWriMo winners!
#NaNoPrep – are your WriMos ready?
If your students are participating in NaNoWriMo (in T – 3 days), then they are probably chomping at the bit to start writing. There’s nothing like telling students they CAN’T write until a certain date to get them begging for permission to write! If they have created their characters, crafted their conflicts and plotted their plot, then they are probably more than ready to start chapter one.
But being ready to write doesn’t mean they are ready to deal with the inevitable road blocks that will get in their way once they get past the first page. Be proactive and get your students ready before they crash and burn:
- give them time to explore the resources on the Young Writers Program site for NaNoWriMo. Not only should they create and personalize their accounts, but they also need time to check out the Dare Machine, the NaNo News and the Author Pep Talks, and to find their writing buddies on the site. When they start writing on November 1st, tell them to open the NaNo site in another tab so they can access it during writing time.
- get them familiar with gmail and Google docs (assuming your students have access). We use Google docs because it stores their work in their gmail accounts (which means no need for flash drives), and also because all work is saved automatically. But most young students don’t have much experience with gmail or docs, so they’ll need time before November to get comfortable with them. You don’t want to waste time on November 1st explaining it (and dealing with forgotten passwords), so practice with Google in the days up to NaNo Day 1.
- teach them how to write dialogue and have them practice. My students are 13, and most of them have not written much dialogue, but they will definitely want to include dialogue in their novels. Better to have them practice with it now, before they write pages and pages of indecipherable dialogue.
- have basic directions posted in your room for logging in to online accounts, for what to do when they get stuck, and for updating their word count at the end of each writing session. That way you won’t need to interrupt their writing to give directions.
- create a shared document for all your students and have them come up with their own dares; another shared doc of their own excerpts can also be motivational.
- consider letting them listen to music while they write. The first year my students wrote novels, the silence in the room was a distraction in itself. When I let them plug in earbuds and listen to music on their phones, they were able to stay focused much longer. Or you could play music for the whole class. Anything to break the eerie silence of writers writing.
If you are a teacher interested in bringing the magic of NaNoWriMo to your students, check out my NaNoTeacher website for oodles of help.
Bring it on, November! We are ready-WriMos.
A pro-choices classroom
We teachers of young adolescents learn early on to grab our students’ gratitude when we can: their glee over a clever assignment, their pride in a hard-earned grade, their bashful “thanks” as they hand over a holiday gift probably bought and wrapped by a parent. It’s a rare treat indeed when our students communicate their gratitude to us in writing.
Even better is when a student thanks us for something that we had hoped would be a valuable teaching strategy or meaningful lesson.
This student’s thank-you note was especially sweet: not only did he remember that I love dark chocolate, but he also recognized the value in having choices in the work he did in my class.
When my students write literary analysis, they get to choose which part of the literature they want to address and through which lens they will analyze it. When they join National Novel Writing Month, they completely own the novel they write: the genre, the plot, the characters, the conflicts. When it’s time to develop their expository writing skills, they create a magazine on a topic of their own choosing. In digital media class, my students choose what kind of project they want to create: architectural design, computer game design, movie-making, animation, computer coding, etc.
I am staunchly pro-choice in my classroom. I am pretty sure that the best learning happens when students have some say in how and what they learn.
How do you let your students own their work? What kinds of choices do you give them in the classroom?
A Novel and Most Excellent Cause
You are frustrated with the testing emphasis in education, and you really resent politicians and non-educators trying to tell teachers what to do in their classrooms. You are especially upset over the shift away from creative, artistic pursuits in the classroom as drill-and-kill math and reading replace the arts. So what can you do to make a difference?
Don’t despair, my friend! The Office of Letters and Light is a non-profit organization that believes in “ambitious acts of the imagination,” and they really put their money where their mouth is. They provide the complete National Novel Writing Month curriculum, including student workbooks, teacher lesson plans, online support for students and teachers, AND it is all linked to the new Common Core Standards AND it is all FREE. What more could a teacher ask for?
My daughter, Chloe, and I are fundraising for this most excellent cause so that more students and teachers can write novels as part of their school experience. You have read about my students’ NaNoWriMo experiences here and here (and my current students are right in the middle of their month of “literary abandon” here) — now you can help us help them keep doing this important and beautiful work.
Just click on our fundraising page here: Laura and Chloe’s NaNoWriMo fundraising page and donate today! This is a last minute plea, as the race to be the top fundraiser ends this Weds. 11/14. Will you be the donor who gets us to our goal?
Chloe is offering a unique opportunity: donors’ stories may be written in to her current novel! Watch her video here to see how.
Watch this video to learn more about the great work of The Office of Letters and Light.
Thank you!
Day One of NaNoWriMo
Here they are, my 8th grade novelists, hard at work on chapter one (and that’s our wonderful principal, Emily Dunnagan, supporting our writing challenge by working on her novel with us):
Call me NaNo…
It’s Day One of NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month), and my 8th graders wrote for a full hour in class, tap-tap-tapping away on the first chapters of their novels. They wrote in a Google Doc, which they shared with me, so when I should have been working on my own novel, I was taking peeks at theirs. Wow! Some great stuff. Here are just a handful of opening lines that caught my attention:
My favorite sound in the world is the click of a camera shutter, not the crack of a gunshot. (AG)
School sucks. Yet another black eye from yet another dumb brute who plays football. (NB)
We barely slid under the first gate before it was slammed shut. (DH)
Look at those NaNos go! (And hooray for our principal, who worked on her novel with us today!)
My window overlooked New York City and I knew that somewhere past the newly constructed and the old historic buildings of New York were the graffitied and dangerous streets of the Bronx, leading to my favorite place in the world, Yankee Stadium. (SL)
The beginning of the end for me was when I moved to San Francisco. (PB)
He expected it to be just like any other school year: normal stupid friends, normal jerk teacher, normal inedible food, normal everything. (BK)
It was the long bitter winter of 2040 when all this began. (DW)
“Is he dead?”
“Of course he’s dead! That’s usually what happens when someone gets shot!” (BL)
Charlie stood in the doorway, a ripped piece of paper clutched in his hand—his good hand. (EB)
I took a deep breath, inhale, exhale, and stepped back into the monotony of my life. (JG)
Not even a Halloween candy hangover got in the way of our writing today!
It was september 2, 2033, the fourth week of school, and already I was wishing it was summer. (DG)
Life is like Russian Roulette, a game, a risk you take. It is a choice that comes with a chance, and the thrill, the temptation, of death. (RP)
Terry stared down at his scar as the rain splashed against the glass of the taxi car window. (DW)
Nate didn’t get it.“You’re fired, Nate. I’m sorry.” Only his boss, Mr. Newman, wasn’t sorry. (JS)
The woman clutched the man’s arm as the impact of the bombs shook the ground. (HD)
The sounds of blaring horns and rhythmic footsteps came echoing up through the narrow streets of the commerce district. (HH)
Hi, I’m Desean Rodriguez and I am a ninja. Yeah, no big deal really. (HK)
My sleep was plagued with nightmares, and I found little comfort in the darkness of my room. (JK)
I knew that at that very moment, I had been infected, I had been diseased, and I would never be the same again. (EF)
He had eaten out again, and having left without paying, the police were after him. (HH)
My name is Aurora Swayley. I am 17 years old. There is nothing special about me. That is until they entered my life. (GW)
Rain rolls down the window in time with my tears. (DC)
Ben Jackson was on his way to his dream – his Nobel Prize. (CM)
The frosty November air bit at my cheeks and water drops from the trees splashed down on my already wet hair. (EM)
School had been out for just a half hour when I checked my Google Drive again — and there I could see students working on their novels from home. Can’t wait to read more!
