NaNoWriMo

Over to your right, you'll notice some new graphics (Micah had nothing to do with them, excuse the blandness). What're they about? Well, it's November, which for thousands means, National Novel Writing Month. Some of you may recall that I gave it a shot. Sadly, energy, enthusiasm, homeschooling, and life in general got in the way, and I just didn't get that far. But I've been gearing up for this year's for a bit, and think I have a better game plan going in.

I was poking around their website last week, and out of curiosity, checked out their Young Writer's Program. Inspiration struck, and we've now canceled about 1/3 of our normal school stuff for November for an exercise in Applied Language Arts. I've always admired (and wanted to be) one of those homeschool parents who throws their gameplan out the window because their kids were interested enough in something that they just focus on it for a few weeks. Just couldn't find anything to do like that.

The people over at NaNoWriMo have really done a great job with their Young Writer's Program, they have some age-appropriate workbooks to give guidance through the process; they allow parents/teachers and the writers to set their target goal instead of having something set; and there's enough fun stuff on the site (when traffic's low enough) to keep the writer's amused when they need a break from their work.

The kids are really into the idea--which I love, because they typically approach a writing exercise like a series of inoculations. Frodo and the Princess are both a few words ahead of their daily quota, Samwise is at about 50% (his brain works like mine, I expect great strides in Week 4). Arnold's annoyed because I'm not involving him--call me cruel, but if the kid can't read, I don't think he should be trying to author a book (I'm sure even Dan Brown could work his way through a Boxcar Children novel).

We've got a 4 day vacation this week that's gonna louse up our schedule a bit, but on the whole, I'm thinking that having the kids do it with me--and having to keep their enthusiasm up, is really going to help me. Not to mention, really don't like the idea of hearing "Frodo, you've met your writing targets for 2 weeks now, your Father's still trying to catch up to Week 1."

So in addition to my official NaNoWriMo widget down below, we've got the little graphics for the three kids and our collective word goal, to advertise our progress (nothing inspires like the pressure of many, many people seeing your fail).