It’s done.

Well, almost done…

in 95 minutes national novel writing month ends & thne I need to return to using proper grammer, spacing, and such

It’s been a great month. I wish I would have stuck to my goal. The first eight days of the month, I woke up at 4:30am. My goal was to wake up that early every day (failed greatly).  After eight days, I had put out 43,000+ words. Once I hit 50,000 words, I lost all motivation to keep writing at such a pace.

Enough about me, let’s talk about the students!

As the picture below indicates, a group of twelve-ish students is closing in on 300,000 words! We had fifteen writeshops of ninety minutes, all held right at our school. The students organized a half dozen write-ins at coffee shops in Green Bay. And this evening, we are having an eight hour write-in at our school to end the adventure.

I had to throw on my headphones and crank out this blog post. The delirious laughter of overtired adolescent students and the smell of burnt frozen pizza is a sign the writing is starting to fade for most. It’s also a sign the community is stronger.

The kids are taking charge.

I’m not sure what #NaNoWriMo is, even though I’ve gone through it twice now. But what I’m sure of is there is a bit of magic in a group of people taking off on a month long question.

I am so proud of my students.

I will do this again next year (but not the 8-hour write-in at school at the end of a 50 hour work week, that’s is not smart. I am writing this not to myself so other keep me accountable….:)

On a side note, I write this post with my niece just twelve feet behind me. She’s closing in on her goal. She’s been counting out loud her goal. “Just five hundred more words!” And each time she says how far she has to go, the rest of the group cheers her on. My niece took a leap. Not only did she join a group of complete strangers, but she drove two hours to come to this write-in today.  The community of learners took her right in. I know I’ve acted annoyed at all of the Dr. Who references and rolled my eyes at Emilie Autumn’s electric violin, but I am so happy to be an annoyed teacher right now and I am so proud of  the young woman Moira is turning out to be.

-Michael