Tuesday, November 5, 2013

National Novel Writing Month

writingIn Writers! NaNo-ers! Rebels! From Sioux's Page, Sioux  talks about National Novel Writing Month otherwise known as NaNoWriMo which is during the month of November. This group encourages people to write at least 50,000 words this month.

For me, saying I would write a novel is pretty daunting but writing 50,000 words is pretty amazing too. It falls in the same category as running 50,000 miles. But if I break this down into days, it is about 1700 words a day which could possibly be more manageable.

I started thinking about 50,000 as a number.

I started an exercise program this year in order to lose weight. I didn’t want to be on a diet but wanted a life style change so I decided I would try to walk at least 10,000 steps each day. At first I thought it was impossible and now I’m finding that I reach this goal at least 5 out of every 7 days. I’m always amazed when I see the total steps I walk for the week.

My maximum level of calories is 1800 calories each day but mostly stay between 1300 and 1600 each day. This means that I get about 50,000 calories each month.

I burn about 1600-2000 calories each day. This means I burn about 50,000 calories for the month.

So maybe I could try to write a novel with at least 50,000 words. Maybe.

I know that my students see final goals for the class in the same way. They see accomplishing goals as insurmountable.

Maybe I need to find parallels in their life that match the final goals. They need to see that they accomplish things in the same way but the final goal is just different. It is almost like going on a trip and traveling the same amount of miles but just ending at a different destination.

I think that writing would be a great project this month but for my students, I would make it a word number goal. Maybe I would make a number of days kind of goal or number of paragraphs.

I think the important thing would be to get students writing and thinking and sharing.

Do you focus on writing this month? What activities do you do? Please share.

Image: 'Be seeing you
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1 comment:

Micheal Thompson said...

Generalizes in exercise of both mind and body. Interesting activity, indeed.