Last July my writing group agreed to do our own novel writing month. For those who aren't familiar, there's actually an official NaNoWriMo (wait for it), but it takes place in November, and as teachers, it seemed silly to try to write a novel in a month in the middle of the school year when we had the whole summer to try it.
In retrospect, I'm not sure if that was a good call or not-- the old adage that if you want something done, give it to a busy person, might have had some bearing here. Each of the four of us started a novel, but early on we abandoned the basic concept of the challenge, that "Because of the limited writing window, the ONLY thing that matters in NaNoWriMo is output. It's all about quantity, not quality. The kamikaze approach forces you to lower your expectations, take risks, and write on the fly." I like to think that we thought too highly of our ideas to relegate them to such fast and furious crap production, but who knows?
By the end of the month we had roughly 20% of the required word count, but we all had the beginning of, well, a novel. I've worked on mine on and off since then, and I feel like I'm making some progress. There have been unexpected benefits, too. In a beginning-of-the-year-introduce-yourself exercise with my students, I mentioned that I was working on a novel, and I was amazed at the level of interest and engagement that they showed. It gave me some serious writing cred with the sixth graders. As the year has gone on, I've used bits and pieces of my work-in-progress to discuss leads, hooks, and character development, and it's been really fun; the kids have offered some constructive advice, too.
My novel is about two 12-year-old boys who are geocaching and find a clue to a real treasure. The kids in the story are based on two boys whom I adore-- my nephew and my godson. When I'm writing, I like imagining what one or the other of them might do in the situations that I am making up. I also think that they think it is pretty cool to be characters in a novel. They both happen to be here in the room with me at this very moment; that only happens a few times a year, and we're going to do a little novel reading in a few minutes. I hope they like it.
In retrospect, I'm not sure if that was a good call or not-- the old adage that if you want something done, give it to a busy person, might have had some bearing here. Each of the four of us started a novel, but early on we abandoned the basic concept of the challenge, that "Because of the limited writing window, the ONLY thing that matters in NaNoWriMo is output. It's all about quantity, not quality. The kamikaze approach forces you to lower your expectations, take risks, and write on the fly." I like to think that we thought too highly of our ideas to relegate them to such fast and furious crap production, but who knows?
By the end of the month we had roughly 20% of the required word count, but we all had the beginning of, well, a novel. I've worked on mine on and off since then, and I feel like I'm making some progress. There have been unexpected benefits, too. In a beginning-of-the-year-introduce-yourself exercise with my students, I mentioned that I was working on a novel, and I was amazed at the level of interest and engagement that they showed. It gave me some serious writing cred with the sixth graders. As the year has gone on, I've used bits and pieces of my work-in-progress to discuss leads, hooks, and character development, and it's been really fun; the kids have offered some constructive advice, too.
My novel is about two 12-year-old boys who are geocaching and find a clue to a real treasure. The kids in the story are based on two boys whom I adore-- my nephew and my godson. When I'm writing, I like imagining what one or the other of them might do in the situations that I am making up. I also think that they think it is pretty cool to be characters in a novel. They both happen to be here in the room with me at this very moment; that only happens a few times a year, and we're going to do a little novel reading in a few minutes. I hope they like it.
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