NaNoWriMo

I used to hate writing growing up. I would have much rather been drawing pictures of cartoon characters or fantastical landscapes than express myself through written words. But when I became a teacher and began to teach writing to students, something in me began to change. I began to get excited about things like sentence structure, grammar (which I call G.U.M. time in my class - Grammar Usage and Mechanics), and narrative writing. Since teaching is all about modeling to your students, it became hard for me to not take part in the writing assignments that I was giving out to my students.

For the month of November, my students and I, and thousands of other students around the nation, are taking part in NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month). For the entire month, we choose to use 30 minutes of our day to write in our NaNoWriMo journals. Now to some, this may seem like an easy feat, but you would be surprised at how difficult this can truly be. This year, being my third time taking part in the activity, I decided to truly take advantage of the 30 minutes of writing and push myself to create something. And I did.

Yesterday, I finished my first story in my journal. I never would have thought of writing a short story in my spare time, but now that I have done it I actually really enjoyed it. But being the creative person that I am, I am left wanting something a little more. I feel the need to share. Stories are meaningless if they are not shared, so for the following days on the Three Bell Chime, I am going to share my story with you. I know it may be a bit long, but I hope all of you will enjoy reading it as much as I have enjoyed writing it.

Want to learn more about NaNoWriMo and join the thousands of kids writing this month in the USA, click here.