This November. Nanowrimo. Finally.
November is National Novel Writing Month and this fall, I’m writing a first draft of my first novel in thirty days! I have always wanted to take on Nanowrimo, but the idea of writing a novel has always scared me to death. This year, however, I think I’ll approach this behemoth with a group of my students who have expressed interest in going on this journey with me in Nanowrimo’s Young Writers Program.
Yesterday, I posted about Nanowrimo’s student program on my private class Instagram account. I asked those students who were interested to let me know in the comments. Several did exactly that!
So this summer, I’ll be collecting resources and doing some research on how to approach the program with students. I do know we’ll be setting a daily word-count goal, which means that we’ll need to meet daily for thirty days (after school most likely) to crank out our novels.
Our point in meeting for thirty days after school is not to create perfect first drafts, but adequate first drafts. Some of the drafts will be shakily plotted and some of them might have less-than-stellar characterization, but that’s okay! The point is to create a first draft that’s ripe for revision. In short, the program is designed to get writers actually writing their novels, not just thinking about writing their novels. Amen to that! How many times have I told myself that “someday” I’m going to write a novel?! Nanowrimo provides the framework to defeat procrastination and just get a novel written.
If you do a quick Google search of “Nanowrimo young writers program,” you’ll find a guide for educators. You can print out a PDF of a workbook for students. It explains how to build an online class profile with individual records of student progress. Students can create their own accounts that track their own word count progress. At the end of the thirty days, if they’ve met their goals, they win recognition and the capability to print out their novels.
Because the students will end with a first draft, we’ll probably print these out and consider them WIPs (Works in Progress), and then continue to revise them throughout the year. Perhaps by the end of the year, we’ll have a second draft!
But that’s a long way off and there’s much planning to be done. It’s good to know, however, in the meantime, that I have the first requirement taken care of: my students are enthusiastic to accomplish this goal with me.