Celebrate National Novel Writing Month in Your Classroom or Library

We will be celebrating National Novel Writing Month here in the Middle School Library. If you’ve never heard of it, National Novel Writing Month (“Nanowrimo”) is when a bunch of crazy writers try to write a 50,000-word novel in just 30 days. It is primarily a “get it down” writing exercise – the theory being that you have to have words on a page before you can revise them into a wonderful novel. It’s a whole month of “Quantity – Not Quality” – you can worry about quality the other 11 months of the year! You can find more information here: http://www.nanowrimo.org/

Other ways you can Celebrate National Novel Writing Month:

Hold a “write-in” in your class. We’ve done this in English classes, and there’s a crossover opportunity with Geography this year as well. Have students pump out as many words as they can during the class period. (We do about 30-minutes at a time – you may want to offer stretch breaks if you plan to do it for longer). Check in with the word counts at the end of the session.

Hold “write-ins” in your Library. Reserve a space for your “wrimos” to gather during lunch or after school. Keep a posting of word counts in a public place.

Use the “Young Writers Program” Resources at http://ywp.nanowrimo.org/ including my favorite, the “Dare Me Machine.”

Have a “TGIO” Party. Celebrate a month of hard work by having a “Thank God It’s Over” party. You’ll need it. Fortunately, like childbirth, you will only remember the good parts and come back raring to go next year.

Think Small. If you don’t have the time, try doing a daily “One Word” writing prompt at: http://oneword.com/