The Office of Letters and Light Blog

“Fall In Love With Your Characters”: How to Find Writing Motivation

During NaNoWriMo’s “In Your Pocket” Summer Drive, we’ll be posting “My First NaNo” stories from you, our amazing participants, and the writing tips you learned from your maiden voyage. Today, participant Sonia Mahajan shares why embracing your characters is so important: 

I remember that first, magical time: sifting through my piles of one-paragraph novel ideas that had never been completed, coming up with different names, finding the right font, and marking down the days on my calendar until that mind-boggling date: November 1. I waited, tingling with anticipation on October 30 for the sun to rise again so I could finally start writing.

And then, of course, when the morning of November 1 arrived, I met NaNo-itis: I banged on the keyboard for not planning enough and debated throwing my one-paragraph manuscript out the window. Of course, I didn’t—otherwise I might not be typing this right now—but instead grabbed my cup of tea, flexed my fingers, and set out to novel!

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YWP Chronicles: How Alexis Used Her Novel to Benefit a Food Bank

Do you remember when you first began to write down your stories? Alexis Ann Davis, pictured above signing her CreateSpace-published novel in Spokane, is one of the thousands of young writers supported by the NaNoWriMo community through the Young Writers Program, and the first to be spotlighted this year:

As a participant in NaNoWriMo’s Young Writers Program, seven-year-old Alexis Ann Davis reached her word-count goal last November, but didn’t stop there. She leapt into her next endeavor, and published her novel! For some writers, publishing daydreams come complete with money, fame, and fandom. For Alexis, publishing her NaNoWriMo novel has meant helping the community, gaining a sense of accomplishment, and daring to dream big.

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The Young Writers Program: Writing Geeks, Sci-Fi Plays, and Hunting Your Word Count

This past April, Camp NaNoWriMo allowed participants to choose both their word count and their preferred writing form, whether that was a script, short story, novel, poem, or even the back of a cereal box.

Educator Cynthia Garcia took the opportunity to keep alive the spirit of Script Frenzy, a retired program that challenged people to write 100 pages of a script in 30 days. Cynthia hosts two NaNoWriMo events every year at Fairmont Catholic School as an extracurricular activity for students. Since 2010, the participants have grown from twenty to 83.

“NaNoWriMo and Script Frenzy have been the most dazzlingly successful of our projects,” said Cynthia. “Students are engaged with the writing, they are engaged with the project, and they are engaged with each other. They even share their writing with their parents and friends outside school, which I think is terrific, as it makes it that much more meaningful to them.”

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Photo Story: The Young Writers Program, Authors-to-be, and You

Eight daring YWP Wrimos picked up the microphone and shared their novels during the “Thank Goodness It’s Over” NaNoWriMo reading on February 10, 2013 at the Booksmith in San Francisco. The pictures below capture the faces of the bright young authors supported by NaNoWriMo, the Young Writers Program, and you. One day, maybe you’ll find their photos on the back jacket of their published novels. Until then, keep on writing, Junior Wrimos!

Here’s a shout out to our all-stars featured below:

North Oakland Community Charter School, Oakland, CA
Luca Campbell, Francesca Miller-Heller, Justice Petersen, Julian Rosenthal

Creative Arts Charter School, Oakland, CA
Marlowe Heier, Ronin Lanning

Clifford Elementary School, Redwood City, CA
Millen Quinn Alley, Leigh Danielle Alley

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Eight Ways Writing a Novel Can Broaden Your Horizons

Miriam Joy and Charley Robson are Wrimos, high-schoolers, and all-around all-stars, who’ve recently co-authored a book. St. Mallory’s Forever! was independently published this past month. As young writers themselves, they took the time to share just how writing a novel can enrich, empower, and edify:

Though the title of ‘published author’ can take time to achieve, we’ve proudly been writers for years. Both of us have been writing since before we hit ten. That’s all very well, you might say, but surely it’s not terribly fulfilling for young people to spend their free time staring at a backlit screen, drumming their fingers on the keyboard and plotting the defenestration of that mocking, blinking, monitor. 

But apart from the proper usage of various antiquated torture devices, and the effects of different types of alcohol, we’ve also learned a few more philosophical—and, one might say, surprising—things:

• Noveling has taught us to be interested in people, places and experiences that we would otherwise have ignored, to be sensitive to cultures we have no part in, and to be patient in our judgement of others’ thoughts and motivations.

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Be Brave: Why You Should Let Others Read Your Novel

The “Now What?” Months continue with Kim Votry, Young Writers Program educator & author of My Own Magic. Sharing your novel can be scary, but Kim shares just why fortune favors the bold writer:

Although much is said about the solitary lives of writers, most writers I know enjoy community, and thrive on the exchange of ideas that happens when we get together. I know my students do! I teach a year-long novel-writing class to kids in grades 4-8 and the workshop-style critique has become vital to our revision process.

I’ve heard many authors advise against seeking feedback until a complete first draft is produced. But that advice is only right for a certain kind of writer.

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In Your Words: Revision Advice from Young Writers

As the “Now What?” months storm ahead, we asked the thousands of kids, teens, and teachers who write with the Young Writers Program for their best revision advice.

Here are a few things they told us.

On Getting Started:

“Don’t charge at it with open pens, take it slowly, chapter by chapter.” — Sockrocks

“Sometimes, getting the motivation to edit can be hard. Yes, it can feel tedious. And yes, it can feel worthless. But it’s not. You want everyone to see you as the best writer you can be!” — golden retriever

“Make it fun, take it slow, enjoy the process. Pretend it’s a game, a challenge, a treasure hunt.” — Silversparrow

On Just How, Exactly, to Edit:

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Young Novelists of Awesome

It’s Donation Day, and we’re working hard to bring NaNoWriMo back next year—as you toil away at dashing off your novel, you may be feeling alone in the trials and celebrations that come with attempting this feat. Take heart! Hundreds of thousands of fellow writers are working alongside you, including this school:

Last week, I got to pay a visit to one of my favorite November places: Tom Matsumoto Elementary School in San Jose, CA. This is the third year I’ve stopped by, and each time the NaNoWriMo party gets a little bit bigger.

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How to Teach the Young Writers Program: A Q&A with Linda Ulleseit

Linda Ulleseit knows all about the word ‘daring.’ For the last three years, she’s guided her fifth and sixth graders through the Young Writers Program. She taught these budding authors the joys of novel-writing, and led by example: she managed to publish her first novel, On a Wing and a Dare this year.

Amidst the chaos of the new school year, Linda shared tips for NaNoWriMo from her experience with publishing, bringing NaNoWriMo into the classroom, and facing her harshest critics: her fifth and sixth graders!

With NaNoWriMo fast approaching, do you have any advice to keep us from panicking about the 50,000 word count?

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Student Novelists in Bangkok

Selena Gallagher is an educator at the NIST International School in Bangkok, Thailand. NIST has around 1,500 students of over 50 nationalities, ranging in age from 3 to 18—and many of them are getting ready for a new year of NaNoWriMo! We asked her to tell us a little more about NaNo at NIST.

Last November, over 300,000 adults, children and teenagers from many parts of the world wrote novels, collectively writing around three billion words. They were joined by our school, which was participating for the first time. We had budding novelists from Year Five to Year Twelve, writing mostly in their own time, with individual word-count goals ranging from 2,500 to 30,000 words.

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YWP 2012: Calculated for Excellence

As nanowrimo.org enters its Blue Period with a refurbished face and new features, we’ve also been busy with development over at the Young Writers Program. Here are a few things we’re excited about on our relaunched 2012 site.

For the first time, we’ve introduced an interactive Word-Count Goal Calculator. Logged-in users can participate in a 10-minute freewrite, answer a couple of quick questions, and then get a recommendation for a unique, challenging-but-reachable target. We’re hoping it’ll be very helpful to the participants and educators of all ages that participate in the YWP.

Writers can now also customize their workbooks. The free, downloadable PDFs have text boxes for each exercise, so kids and teens can record all their character- and plot-planning in one convenient file.

Our pep talkers this year… well, we’re pretty proud of them. Legends like Lois Lowry, Kate DiCamillo, and Walter Dean Myers join awesome contemporary YA authors to create a perfect storm of noveling encouragement. We’ve also reorganized our pep archive so all that inspiration is in one accessible place.

Speaking of reorganization, we’ve created all-new Resources for Young Writers and Resources for Educators pages. We want our users to be able to easily find anything they need.

There are also several much-requested usability changes (editing novel and author info, adding users to Virtual Classrooms, etc.) that participants and educators will be sure to notice as they get ready for November.

And in non-site-related news, we’re shipping out free classroom kits and YWP merchandise at gazelle-like speeds.

In short, the Young Writers Program is ready for NaNoWriMo 2012. Are you?

— Chris

Eighth Grade NaNo-Novels!

Mrs. Krebs’ eighth graders self-published their November novels! Man, they look awesome. Follow these guys’ complete NaNoWriMo journey in the class blog archives.

If you were a 2011 NaNo winner, you have until June 30 to receive your proof and order your five free copies from CreateSpace.

Already self-published your novel? How’d it go? Tell us (and shamelessly promote it) in the comments!

– Chris