Salt Lake City—Fourteen students at City Academy, a tuition-free charter school in Salt Lake City, are now completing novels as part of National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo). National Novel Writing Month is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization based in Berkeley, Calif.
This is the 18th year that NaNoWriMo has been held. This year’s theme is “Your Novel, Your Universe.” Last year, there were 431,626 participants in 633 different regions on six continents. Over 40,000 of these met the goal of writing 50,000 words in a month.
According to City Academy English teacher, Hana Jabr, “The Young Writers Program is the section of NaNoWriMo that the kids use to tally their words. This program recommends that students try for 30,000 words, but I encourage them to go for 50,000 because I know they can do it. At the end of November, I grade based on the effort they put in as well as their word count.”
Jabr was initially introduced to NaNoWriMo by one of her college professors. Last year, she decided to introduce it to her high school students.
She adds, “The process begins with dedication. Every student who joins the creative writing class must dedicate themselves to this challenge. That’s what makes this different from other classes and other projects. It’s about individual dedication and passion for your work. Students cannot succeed if they are writing the novel for a grade. It’s impossible unless there is a sincere desire to write a novel and to complete the challenge. What a lot of people may not realize is that we all have book ideas floating around in our minds, all we have to do is dig for them; find those stories that are begging to be told and write them down.”
Jabr said the class does a lot of prep work in the months prior to November using the Young Writers Program workbooks that help form and shape the ideas, characters, plots and stories. Students outline and pre-write until Nov. 1 (the rules don’t allow students to start writing until this date).“NaNoWriMo is more than just writing. It challenges you to believe in yourself at your lowest moments. It forces you to overcome self-doubt. Even if you do absolutely nothing with your novel at the end of November, you’ve written a novel–a real, actual, full novel. It’s powerful and I think, no matter what, high school students who complete the challenge get a lot more out of it than just a novel. NaNoWriMo is a community. The kids can bond over struggles or celebrations during the month of November. They find that they can do things they never thought possible,”
“NaNoWriMo is more than just writing. It challenges you to believe in yourself at your lowest moments. It forces you to overcome self-doubt. Even if you do absolutely nothing with your novel at the end of November, you’ve written a novel–a real, actual, full novel. It’s powerful and I think, no matter what, high school students who complete the challenge get a lot more out of it than just a novel. NaNoWriMo is a community. The kids can bond over struggles or celebrations during the month of November. They find that they can do things they never thought possible,” Jabr concluded.
"(Required)" indicates required fields
