bradshreffAs I talked about in my recent post Why Teachers Should NaNoWriMo, I am embarking on the NaNoWriMo journey, and some of it will be taking place here on my blog, so I want to give an update on the kinds of posts you’ll see over the next month.
For NaNoWriMo this year, I am being a Rebel. In the NaNo world, that is an official term. NaNo started as a way to get someone to write a fiction novel of 50,000 words in 30 days. Since then, new lessons have come about as more and more people have taken on the challenge. Personally, I haven’t actually “won” NaNoWriMo in the last 4 years. I came close 4 years ago, did tremendously badly the years after that (I think I wrote less than 12,000 words 2 years ago…I don’t like to talk about it) and last year I got over 30,000 and felt really good about it. Despite the word shortage, I still love the NaNoWriMo challenge and look forward to it every year, because the goal is so much more than an arbitrary word count. For me, the real beauty of NaNo is getting into a daily writing habit. So, I have two different projects I’m working on this year.
Project 1: Daily Blogging
My first goal is to get myself into the habit of writing a blog post daily. I really love the reflective practice that blogging creates. It is a powerful method of metacognition, having me think about my thinking.
I’m also a strong believer that all teachers should share their voice and thoughts in the world. Too often people outside of education judge us based on what the media says or is said about our profession by politicians, principals, parents, or students. At the end of the day though, only the teacher in the classroom knows what’s teally going on, the planning, execution, and learning. Successes and failures.
Unless we share those stories, then others will continue to direct our stories.
I will be writing a blog post each day, most of the times about education or my thoughts, but I won’t be posting them every day. Some of them will stink, for sure, and also, I don’t think I need to post to this blog each day. Let’s be honest, you guys aren’t reading these every day, and that’s fine. No, I’ll write them and save them for later if they’re any good.
Project 2: The Evolving Story of Nanos
My real creative excitement is coming from NaNoWriMo itself, and more specifically, from the work I’m doing for the NaNOrlando region. I am one of two Municipal Laisions for region, meaning that I help plan the events, organize the writers, communicate with the group about events and regional progress, and collaborate with local businesses for donations and space. This year though, I’m taking this role as lot farther.
Each year, NaNoWriMo has a theme. In the past, this theme has meant little more to me than determining the style of the swag they make, and the look of the stickers they send me to giveaway. This year, they announced that the theme was super heroes, and my Co-ML and I, being super feels ourselves, freaked out.
We started brainstorming ideas, and one of them was to create a region-wide D&D-style game in which we would tell a story of our region of hero writers fighting an evil villain. Through a few different riffing sessions, we developed the character of Nanos and his group of evil minions The Illiterati, who want to stop all stories from existing in the world.
As the month of November goes on, I will be writing the story, and whether we succeed or fail at each point will be based on if we are meeting our word count goals. The more words written, the better we will do against Nanos and his minions.
So, I will be releasing parts of the story on this blog starting tonight! You can hear about our exciting adventures as we try to stop Nanos from colleting the 6 Writing Gems and destroying stories as we know them!