A Winning Thanksgiving

It's Thanksgiving here in America, and there are so many things that I'm thankful for.  I'm thankful for all the technology that connects me to those of you out there who are reading this.  I'm thankful for my computers in particular, which reminds me that I'm thankful for a light that left us this year, the inimitable Steve Jobs.  I'm thankful for my family, I'm thankful for my friends, I'm thankful that I get to homeschool, and I'm thankful that we live in such an abundant country and get to eat a wonderful meal of turkey (and ham, in our case) and mashed potatoes and vegetables and dessert (chocolate, yay!) and such.

I'm also thankful for things that have gone well for my friends and that remind me all the things I take for granted.  So this year, I'm grateful for working refrigerators, dry floors...or just floors in general in another case, catalytic converters, and oven burners.  I'm also grateful that my friend, whose father is about to pass on to whatever it is that happens after this life, gets to be up there with him and her entire family and to mark this transition with the meaning and connection that it deserves.

But one thing that really makes this Thanksgiving special, compared to all of them, is that today I wrote over 3,000 words on my novel, which takes me over the 50,000 word mark of words written since November 1.  That also means that, in the eyes of NaNoWritMo, that I am an official "Winner."  It feels very special to pass that particular milestone on Thanksgiving itself.  That wasn't what I was planning, but it's the way things worked out.

The downside to this august occasion is that I'm still not close to actually finishing the book, which is my real goal for my writing for November.  But I don't have a lot of commitments outside the house this long weekend, so maybe I can churn out a lot of the end in the next few days.

But whatever, I've earned that NaNoWriMo winner badge!  As has my son, who has far exceeded his goal already (and his goal was double the word count goal recommended by the organizers) !

So I'm thankful that I'm a winner.  I hope you can spend some time this weekend thinking about the ways that you and your family are winners, too!

Curriculum Resource: The Museum of Online Museums (MoOM)

:When you have a big task looming ahead of you (like writing 50,000 words in 30 days), which you have been spending too many of your waking hours on already, distraction is only a click away with the Internet.  In one of my flights of fancy today, I discovered the Museum of Online Museums (MoOM), which actually is a fabulous resource.

The Museum of Online Museums is just what it sounds like--a collection of links to museums around the world with exhibits and other information available online.  But what a collection!

It is divided into different sections.  The first section, The Museum Campus, has all your usual suspects--the Smithsonian, MoMA, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Virtual Museum of Canada, etc--with links conveniently located on the same page.  Then there is The Permanent Collection, which has mostly art and university collections that you might not be aware of, but that could prove useful--sites like Duke's Rare Book and Manuscript Collection, or the Flanders Fields Museum, or Art Treasures from Kyoto.

Finally, you come to Galleries, Exhibits, and Shows.  This part contains listings to the most bizarre and diverse collections I've ever seen.  Here are a sampling of the current exhibits:

• Museum of Snake Charmer Imagery
• The Aerosol Spray Paint Can Museum Covers
• International Gallery of Restroom Hand Dryers
• Take Out Beverage Lid Collection

And it goes on and on like that.  MoOM picks out a few of these to feature each quarter, but there is something there to fit almost anyone's fancy.

However, this is a great resource to know about to answer questions our students have about obscure things.  For example, I have accessed The DOS Museum (one of their listings) before when trying to remember and explain the history of computer development to my son.  That's not one of the most obscure, but you get the idea.  It's a good place to bookmark for when they ask you something about the history of some aspect of our culture that you have no idea where to start looking for the answer.

Finally, it can come in handy when you are writing something like NaNoWriMo.  For example, say I am writing a scene about my protagonists going to the movie in either a different country or a different time period.  What candy should I have them buy to consume during the movie?  Well, by visiting Mike's Candy Bar Wrapper Collection, I can not only find the correct name of the candy they would eat in Canada, but describe the wrapper as well.

So whether you are looking for more academic purposes, or want to lose yourself in the wormhole of the World Wide Web, (MoOM) can help you out.

How to Write Good

It has been an intense week of writing for NaNoWriMo, so I thought I would end the week with a humorous piece of writing advice that was composed by Frank L. Visco and originally published in Writer's Digest (June 1986):

HOW TO WRITE GOOD
by Frank L. Visco

My several years in the word game have learnt me several rules:

1. Avoid Alliteration. Always.
2. Prepositions are not words to end sentences with.
3. Avoid cliches like the plague. (They’re old hat.)
4. Employ the vernacular.
5. Eschew ampersands & abbreviations, etc.
6. Parenthetical remarks (however relevant) are unnecessary.
7. It is wrong to ever split an infinitive.
8. Contractions aren’t necessary.
9. Foreign words and phrases are not apropos.
10. One should never generalize.
11. Eliminate quotations. As Ralph Waldo Emerson once said, “I hate quotations. Tell me what you know.”
12. Comparisons are as bad as cliches.
13. Don’t be redundant; don’t use more words than necessary; it’s highly superfluous.
14. Profanity sucks.
15. Be more or less specific.
16. Understatement is always best.
17. Exaggeration is a billion times worse than understatement.
18. One word sentences? Eliminate.
19. Analogies in writing are like feathers on a snake.
20. The passive voice is to be avoided.
21. Go around the barn at high noon to avoid colloquialisms.
22. Even if a mixed metaphor sings, it should be derailed.
23. Who needs rhetorical questions?

The NaNoWriMo Challenge!

Well, I've done it--I've accepted the NaNoWriMo challenge.  As I wrote in my earlier post, NaNoWriMo is the abbreviation for National Novel Writing Month, an international program to write a novel in a month.  In my post, I wrote specifically about the Young Writers Program because my son had decided to participate in that.   However, they also have an adult program, which my son has been....let's say, strongly encouraging....me to do along with him.  While the students can set an age-appropriate goal--my son is aiming for a minimum of 10,000 words--in the adult program, you must write at least 50,000 words to become a NaNoWriMo "winner."  And all that writing must take place in the only-30-days month of November.

It's a big challenge to take on, especially on top of everything else I'm already committed to do in November.  On the other hand, NaNoWriMo is something I've been planning to do sometime "when the time is write."  But when will that ever happen?  When do I think I'll have a November that is less busy than all my previous Novembers have been?

So with my son's encouragement, along with a couple of my adult friends who have also decided to participate this year, I decided that this year was when "the time is right."  If I'm going to do it, I would much rather do it while my son is also writing a novel, and I'm much happier with some adult companionship as well.

However, this does mean I have to cut back on some things, and this blog may be one of them.  I'll still try posting, at least periodically, but they will probably be posts that mostly refer to other resources that are appropriate to this age rather than a lot of original writing.  I hope you all will understand.  I'll be back to my more normal posting style by December.

I think they will be developing a widget I can put on my blog to keep everyone updated about how my writing is going (quantity-wise, at least).  If so, I'll add it to my side column so you can see how I am doing, for better or for worse.  The first day has been good, at least.  They have figured out that you have to write a minimum of 1,667 words EVERY day for all 30 days of November, and so far today I've written 2,446.  Personally, I'm aiming for 2,500 words per day, because that is how much you must write if you only write 20 out of 30 days, and I'm sure there will be some days where I'm too busy to write.

Anyway, I'll keep you posted on the novel.  And I've been stockpiling some good resources to share with you this month, so I'm not abandoning you completely.  For example, tomorrow I plan to post a great educational way to help your middle schoolers understand the concept that we reached an estimated 7 billion in world population this week.

Curriculum Resource NaNoWriMo Young Writers Program (with special guest appearance by Eragon's Christopher Paolini)

Good news--the NaNoWriMo Young Writers Program website for 2011 is up!  You are probably familiar with the NaNoWriMo program--that is, the short-hand description for NAtional NOvel WRIting MOnth, an online effort to encourage thousands of adults to write a 50,000-word novel in the space of a month (and  November, one of those only 30 day months at that).  It is supposed to be an intense writing experience, which I hope to do one of these years (but I don't think this will be the year).

However, my son would like to do NaNoWriMo this year.  Fortunately for him, they have a great website that supports younger writers (who also get to work towards a smaller total word count).  The site has countdown clocks and word counters and Internet badges and lots of cool stuff like that to attract students to the project.  It also has some things to get them over writer's block, such as a Dare Machine, which "dares" authors to include certain things in their stories or try some fun writing exercises, such as having your characters write a novel about YOU.

But once November starts, much of the program is geared towards encouraging students to actually finish the novels they have begun.  One way they do that is to have published authors send emails to the students with bits of advice or pep talk.  And guess who will be sending some emails this year?  None other than Christopher Paolini, who wrote the first of his famous Eragon series when he was 15 and was homeschooling.  Now, with 25 million of his books sold worldwide, he is the hero among young writers, but especially among those who homeschool.

HOWEVER--even if you and your students/children aren't participating, there are still resources to check out.  Of particular interest to teachers is their collection of hour-long lesson plans about many aspects of writing, including creating characters, developing conflict, writing good dialogue, choosing a setting that support the characters, and so on.  Click here to see the full list of lesson plans available for middle school students.

So whether or not you end up writing a novel in a month, it is a curriculum resource that is worth checking out.