NaNoWriMo for Kids

NaNoWriMo YWP

If you think writing a 50,000 word novel in a month is hard, try NaNoWriMo as a 6th grader. For homework!

Granted, the goal for the kids is only 50 pages, but I have plot nightmares just thinking about it. (Even if it does make me secretly wish I could go back to middle school.)

Imagine a library full of kids chattering, bouncing ideas, patching plot holes with dragons. Their fingers fly as they click away on their netbooks, focusing on the assigned foreshadow or flashback.

Five hundred kids. Writing.

I had the chance to witness this because (via WNBA Charlotte) I helped Monika Schroeder arrange an author visit as part of the NaNoWriMo event at Marvin Ridge Middle School. (All made possible by a grant from North Carolina School Library Media Association, and Brita Mann, our awesome Media Coordinator. Union County Weekly ran a half page article with more details.)

Over the course of the six week program, other authors are Skyping in too, giving the kids plenty of inspiration. John Claude Bemis was there last week, which was when I visited.

John gave a presentation and ate lunch with some of the kids. (How cool is that?)
He took fan questions about his books, and questions every aspiring writer/author asks, like:

What happens if I'm coming to an end, and I still don't have enough words?
Answer: Be mean to your character. Create more problems.

AND

Did people think you wouldn't be successful as a writer?
Answer (paraphrased): It was more me telling myself I couldn't do it.

Ouch! That hit close to home.

In between sessions, I spoke with John about good reads, and good writing workshops. He was very encouraging. (Former teachers can be like that.)

Anyhoo. The moral of the story:

The whole experience kicked me out of the "Woe, is me." tailspin so fast, I sat down to my writing again the very next day. Also, I have a feeling my list of acknowledgements will be very long, someday. In the meantime: BICHOK, people!

And Happy Thanksgiving!

Lateral Thinking



via NorthernTool.com

I spent this past weekend with some amazing authors and industry professionals at the SCBWI Carolinas conference. Except it was only when John Claude Bemis gave the closing speech that I felt I was truly swimming in my element.

His talk was about lateral thinking, which apparently expats and multilinguals do very well.

I was like: Hey! That's me! Until he gave us the warm up exercise and I couldn't come up with any evidence that I deserved the points.

In my defense, it was a low-caf Sunday morning and I'd just been bombarded with three days of information. Anyway - my contribution is a red fez - to anyone else who was there.

So Sunday night I go home to mull over everything I've learned. I pick up the short stories on the nightstand, figuring if I could get a few of those in, it would quiet the buzz in my head.

Picture this:

I'm reading in bed, engrossed in the story of an asphalt layer (John Grisham's contribution to Don't Quit Your Day Job) when my dear, dear, dearest husband mutters:

Cordless Super Jerky Blaster?

Now, usually, I ignore everyone and keep reading, but the odd combination of words just pulled me right out of the book.

Me: Did you just say Cordless Super Jerky Blaster?

You should know, my husband speaks English as a fifth language (very well, I might add) so he can be... mislead by some phrases. But he was reading the Nothern Tool catalog.

He offers me the catalog with a gesture that says "Please, help me understand!"

And here's where I:

1) Start laughing until my sides split

and

2) Come up with some great lateral thinking

All I could picture was:

Codename: Kids Next Door

via wikipedia

Have you seen this bunch of ten year olds take down an adult lately? Well, the Cordless Super Jerky Blaster looks EXACTLY like something they would use. AND the next pages in the tool catalog feature go carts to mount them on! Plus a plethora of other interesting items, but I'll let you explore them on your own.

The point of all this is: You don't need to be an ex-expat, or multilingual, or a transplant to find ideas for your lateral thinking. Lateral thinking is just ordinary stuff that you use in an extraordinary way.