AuTHor Thursday: NaNoWriMo Madness and Resources

As the calendar turned to November, novel writing madness began. While not all of you reading this may feel inspired to write a 50,000 word story (which is really "only" 1,667 words per day), the writing resources available via National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) could prove valuable for you as a writer and for the writers in your classes.

The National Novel Writing Month website offers encouragement, including a "pep talks" page found here. They have a pep talks archive, linking to writing pep talks from authors ranging from Lemony Snicket to Sue Grafton to Kate DiCamillo and beyond!  There are also helpful forums where one can obtain help from naming characters to research questions to "adopting" a character or title.

The Young Writer's Program NaNoWriMo website offers free downloadable "Young Novelist Workbooks" for elementary, middle, and high school levels. The Dare Machine on the homepage can also be good for generating writing challenges from "Introduce a character raised by animals" to "Give one of your characters a bizarre injury."

So. Even if you do not see yourself entering into the NaNoWriMo madness, consider checking out all the writing resources to inspire and support writing. Who knows, maybe one day you might take November's writing challenge! (Or maybe you already have.) Until then, keep writing and encouraging others to write!