Nanowrimo kicks off

Nanowrimo prep kicked off today with fun activities. The Nanowrimo Young Writers Program is a global, seat of the pants writing challenge where kids try to write a novel and achieve their word goals in a month.

Kids explored what a novel is and its component elements - characters, setting and plots. They identified the different genres that their novel could fit into - a historical adventure, a Sci Fi mystery and others.

Then they got to write about their favourite novel - and create an advertisement for it.  Older kids delivered a Book Talk where they spoke persuasively about why their favourite would make great reading.

The greatest fun was to draw their Inner Editor - the monstrous entity that sows doubt in their hearts, makes them wonder if they got the spelling right or if the punctuation was appropriate.  After sketching him, kids tore out the paper and gave their illustration to me to lock up for a month. Now they can write  freely without that inner voice of doubt.

The Outer Editor - who makes them criticise or mock their friends was also chucked out of the window - making ours a safe space to express innermost thoughts and feelings and to share our whacko ideas and crazy novels.

Looking forward to tomorrow's lessons on creating characters.

#nanowrimo #creativity  #kids