The JuNo Project

I've been thinking about ways to use our blog to support and encourage each other as we work on our July novel thing.

As I was cleaning up my room on Friday, I found the NaNoWriMo materials for middle school students. I remember thinking when I printed them last October that they looked promising, and I still think so. I also went back and re-read the e-mail exchange I had with Leah about trying to pull off some novel writing with our students.

From: Tracey 10/30/07 1:03 PM
Subject: NaNoWriMo

Hey Googler,

Do your thing and let me know what you think.

From: Leah 10/30/07 1:27 PM
Subject: OHMANNONO

Okay that's cool, but what type of craziness do you envision here?

From: Tracey 10/30/07 4:30 PM
Subject: Did you mean craziness in a good way?

Well, at first I was all in, but I must be getting old, because then I decided that two days was not enough time to pull it all together. I wish I had found the site two months or even two weeks ago, because I have great visions of all 185 of us writing for the whole month of November, churning out novels, posting excerpts and page counts on WHWN, workshopping, building fluency.

Did you see the young writers program, though?

http://ywp.nanowrimo.org/

The middle school materials look awesome. Isn't there some way we could pull it off?

From: Leah 10/30/07 10:13 PM
Subject: It’s a good IDEA

Really, it's awesome, but you're nuts. My excuse for not embracing this fully is that I just lost an evening to Halloween costume madness added on to the homework routine around here…

Listen, I LOVE the idea of kids writing like crazy for the next 30 days. If you think there's a way to launch it in the next day or so, I guess I'm open to ideas, but I haven't had a second to consider the practicality of it. Keep in mind that this would derail my Day in the Life fun, but whatever. Are you still actually keen on this? DID I mean craziness in a good way? I'm still thinking about that question.