nanowrimo

Dec 2, 2009

Blythe has just finished NaNoWriMo or National Novel Writing Month. She found out about it from her friend, Katherine, and then started writing back on November 2nd. Each person sets a word count goal and then writes all month long to reach that goal. Every participant that reaches their personal goal wins and receives a certificate.

I was impressed with several things. NaNoWriMo kept her attention all month long and she worked hard on her writing. She incorporated the lessons she learned from Kate’s writing class she took this fall, which was a fabulous class that I hope will be repeated. She also learned that writing a novel takes a lot of time and that if she wants to write well she is going to have to be serious about it and not just throw out ideas and hope they somehow end up in a magical, enticing story.

She was proud of herself. I was proud of her…and then I was hit by a magical idea…

When I woke up this morning and checked my email box, there was another one of Amazon’s marketing emails, which I almost always promptly delete. For some reason, I clicked on this one to see the latest boxed sets of “teen” books. My screen was filled with vampires, dragons, prostitute-looking girls – all of which is disgusting and despicable to me. Then I saw a boxed set of Shannon Hale’s. Blythe and I read The Princess Academy a few years ago, so I thought, “hmmm, I wonder what else she has written.” A few clicks later and I was reading all about The Goose Girl, The Forest Born, and all sorts of other gems. I found an interview of Shannon and it was utterly delightful. She shared why she writes books and what messages she tries to communicate. I hurriedly ran down to wake up Blythe (who is THE HARDEST person in the world to wake up) and squealed “Blythe, Blythe, come with me right now! I have found a book you will love and you must come and find out all about it this very minute. Come, come come!” She quickly jumped (yes, actually jumped!) out of bed and ran upstairs with me. We were like two little school girls who had just found a secret room full of jewels. I played the interview with her, read her all the descriptions of the books, showed her all sorts of stuff about Shannon Hale, and told her I thought we should go on a book hunting mission this afternoon in honor of her finishing her first book. She was thrilled! So, today, after Shakespeare and her weekly temple trip, we will be searching the aisles of the used book store to see if we can snag the whole set. If not, we will go to Barnes and Noble and buy the first book. (We tried the library first, but we are 6th in line, which means it will be at least 18 weeks before we get it! Much too long to wait when a child is on fire about something!)

How fun to finally be at this place with her!

(okay, I just tried to reserve Forest Born at the library and we are 22nd in line! This will never do, I am going to have to find them at the used book store!)