NaNoWriMo has begun!

by Derek Spencer

NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) 2013 is now underway!

For those of you unfamiliar, NaNoWriMo challenges authors to write a 50,000-word novel in one month — from midnight on November 1st to 11:59 PM on November 30th.

It's an incredible challenge that requires some serious dedication, especially if you want to write a novel that actually holds together as opposed to one that's disjointed and bizarre . . . though, of course, that's what editing is for, right?

In order to write 50,000 words in 30 days, you need to write 1,666.67 words per day on average. So, um . . . best get crackin'.

(Perhaps I should take my own advice, as I've managed to bang out a piddling 380 words thus far — and even that took quite an effort. [Yikes.] )

Not in the mood to write yet? Procrastinate (but only a little) with this article, which lists a few works written in a tiny span of time (including Faulkner's As I Lay Dying!):

http://www.newrepublic.com/article/115441/6-great-books-written-6-weeks

Are you and/or your students participating in NaNoWriMo this year? Have you participated before? Let us know about your experiences in the comments!

Derek Spencer is a Marketing Communications Associate at Prestwick House.

My Argument *for* the Thesis Burger

by Rachel Carey

I will never forget the day during eighth grade when my English teacher brought a grill to class. She was going to cook us burgers, she said, but not just any kind of burgers. We’d just begun to learn the process of writing research papers that year, and she’d cemented the construct of the five-paragraph essay into our brains by likening them to burgers (triple-stacked, huge burgers).

Here’s how that worked: the two buns were the introduction (including the thesis) and conclusion paragraphs, then there were three burgers between the two buns which served as the topic sentences (or the three components of the thesis), and the condiments (lettuce, tomato and cheese between each of the patties) served as the respective three supporting sentences for each of the topic sentences —together the patties and the condiments created the greatest of body paragraphs. That was the way to perfectly craft the burger — that was the way to perfectly craft a five-paragraph essay — but she didn’t stop at the perfectly crafted.