NaNoWriMo

First things first! Happy All Saint's Day!! Today is the day when we especially remember that our family is much, much bigger than those we see on earth. We remember those who have made the same journey we are making now, good times and difficult times, and are now enjoying eternity with God in Heaven. We remember our favorite saints who have been canonized by the Church and those saints known only by those around them who are not known to the whole Church. We thank them for their examples and their prayers, and ask them to continue praying for us. As our priest at Mass this morning reminded us, the only thing standing in the way of us becoming saints also is ourselves! We know what is necessary to become saints, we just have to do it!!

 

November 1st marks another event for us this year: NaNoWriMo! No, that's not a typo. NaNoWriMo is short for National Novel Writer's Month (and it's much more fun to say!). It is a program for adults and young writers encouraging them to write a first draft of a novel in a month. At the end of the month, you get a great feeling of accomplishment for the big task you completed and a coupon code for a few free copies of your novel in paperback.

 

Cati often writes stories in her free time, so when I heard about this, I asked her if she was interested. Not only did Cati say yes, but Maria and Matteo said they wanted to do it, too. After talking with some experience participants (a.k.a. other homeschoolers who had done this for several years already) we set what we hope are reasonable word count goals for each one:

Maria: 6,000 (though, she says she actually wants to double this)

Cati: 5,000

Matteo: 1000

 

To put this in perspective, we looked up some word counts on the Internet of other popular novels. You might find this interesting:

War and Peace - 587,287 words

Gone with the Wind - 418,053 words (the longest book I've read, apparently)

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone - 76,944

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows - 198,227

Charlotte's Web - 31,938

Stuart Little - 18,841

Rikki-Tikki-Tavi - 5,896

 

I'm looking forward to reading the kids' stories! They have been working hard over the past few weeks plotting their stories, deciding on characters, conflicts, and themes. It's a wonderful opportunity for them to practice many writing skills and and to use literary elements that we've discussed. It's also a good chance to set a big goal and to then break down that goal into small pieces to help them accomplish it in the end. I can't wait to see how it all unfolds this month!

The kids were very excited to get started today! Here's a look at a couple of the writers hard at work! Matteo is not pictured because I didn't think of taking a picture until he was already done for the day :)

Maria working hard on her first day of NaNoWriMo

Cati typing away at her first NaNoWriMo novel

 

Today's word counts:

Matteo: 140 Cati: 277 Maria: 515

A pretty good start, I think! I'll try to update these totals regularly.

When talking with other moms about NaNoWriMo, I discovered that many of them join their kids in this novel-writing challenge. I don't have the time to jump into such an endeavor, but I found out about a few spin-off ideas similar to this: take a photo everyday, do an art project/drawing/painting everyday, and post to your BLOG everyday. This last one hit me as a worthy challenge, since I know many family and friends miss seeing and hearing about the kids through this blog. So, I've made it my goal for the month to post something everyday! I can't imagine they will be posts as long as this one, but hopefully, I can manage SOMETHING!

 

And, so far, I'm beating the kids in word count for the month: 658 words in this post!

 

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