NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) has a Young Writers Program for students 17 years old and younger. Even better, they have a lot of great freebies (virtual and physical ones) to give away to all of us.
What is NaNoWriMo?
“It is a fun, seat-of-your-pants novel writing event where the challenge is to write an entire novel in just 30 days. That means participants begin writing November 1 and must finish by midnight, November 30. The word-count goal for our adult program is 50,000 words, but our Young Writers Program allows participants who are 17 years old and younger to set reasonable, yet challenging, word-count goals.”
Ready for the challenge? Start with these freebies:
Free Workbooks (digital download):
Before NaNoWriMo, if you would like to teach your students what a novel is all about and how to write one, download one of the three “non-lame” workbooks . (I downloaded all three books: elementary, middle school and high school safely)
Free Classroom Noveling Kit (in your snail mail!)
On the Educators’ Page you’ll find free lesson plans and other resources, but be sure to notice the free classroom noveling kit for classes of ten or more students. The classroom noveling kit contains buttons, stickers, and a progress report. It will be shipped to your mailing address.
How to Get this Freebie: Visit the NaNoWriMo Young Writers Program site to learn more.
Limited Time Offer: Remember, NaNoWriMo begins November 1st!
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My 14 year old wrote a 50,000 word novel last November. She thought the word count was enough on Nov. 29 and submitted it. Their count said it was 49 thousand something, so she had to add another section. Apparently our word processing program counted spaces or something. Anyway, she did get the one free paperback copy of her book. Really cool!
My advice to homeschooling parents is to let some other schoolwork go if the child works hard at this project. It takes a lot of time.
What a 14yo you have!! That's an incredible accomplishment. If she joins the Young Writers, you can set the word count to less than 50,000. I think I might give our kids a goal of 30,000, so they can do 1,000 words per day. Whew. That's a lot as it is.
My 12 year old daughter did it this year. She set her goal at 10,000 words but finished at 11,000 something or other. We took advantage of the free book and now we have a professional looking paperback of her story. It was very exciting when it arrived!
She’s also become addicted to the forums. She’s on them right now, chatting with her fellow young writers!
Shannon, Thank you so much for sharing about your daughter's book. It's great to hear from someone who completed it and received a nice book through it. I'm proud of her, too!
Never had heard of this, so visited the website with my 17-yo son. He was disgusted to learn that nobody affiliated with this “event” even bothers to read the submitted manuscripts. What’s the point? (his perspective, and rather close to my own, too!)
I’ll go back and check out the lesson plans which, I surmise, were the reason that this was posted.
Genuine thanks, nonetheless, for anything related to composition and writing!
Now it’s my turn (not my son’s!).
The downloads are excellent!
Same son referenced looked at the middle school one and predicted that it would be a great motivator for his younger sister, who had lost trust in her own ability to create good fiction.
Thanks for writing, Antonia! I enjoyed reading your perspective and your obviously smart thinking son’s. The point of NaNoWriMo is to “free write,” ignoring the critic within and simply getting the words on paper. For adults, that means write 50,000 words (a novel length).
We can determine how many words a child should get done within the month, and it’s up to us as to whether or not the quality is up to par. I’m going to simply set a word count to encourage a child to write it out without worrying over whether or not it is perfect. We can work on editing in …oh, January or so.
IWe participated last year and we plan on doing it again this year. I was the teacher for my children. 🙂 My child really likes that no one reads the novel or in my son’s case a collection of short stories. He is very self conscious and I doubt he would do it if he thought that it would be monitored. We write in November and the rest or the school year we make corrections and learn from what he wrote.
BTW…even my 3 year old participated by dictating her story. 🙂 It was great!
Thank you i have also write about that