"We Are All Authors": How One Teacher Was Dared to Write by Her Students

NaNoWriMo’s “In Your Pocket” Summer Drive officially launches today! We need your help to make our sites mobile-friendly; in return, we promise to get you 100% ready for July and November’s noveling madness, with exclusive donor goodies marking you as a NaNo-pro.

We’ll also be hosting a series called “ My First NaNo ”, where we ask you, our amazing participants, about your very first NaNoWriMo adventure, and the writing tips you gleaned from your maiden voyage. First up? Denise Krebs, who took on her first NaNoWriMo with her crew of eighth-grade students: 

My first NaNoWriMo was in 2008: My sister had written a novel the year before, and I was so impressed. “I want to write a novel too,” I mused in her presence. She remembered my proclamation and sent me an invitation to join her in October. I remember feeling tentative and scared as the calendar days ticked by.

Well, on the morning of November 1, I woke up early and started writing. I had no idea what to write, so I turned to my senses and memories. My six-year-old self jumped in as a major character. Her name was Tilda, and just like me, she sucked on her upper arm giving herself hickies, to the chagrin of her teenaged sister, Jo.

Everything I saw or experienced, past and present, had equal opportunity to creep its way into my novel. I wrote other mini-me experiences like playing a random game of avoiding grease spots while running across the street, subsequently tripping, falling and almost getting hit by a car. No thought was too random or disjointed for my first novel.

In addition, the novel that came from my first NaNoWriMo experience, Turn Loose the Angels, is replete with shameless word padding and dares taken from the Dare Machine at NaNoWriMo Young Writers Program. My students (also writing novels) and I loved the Dare Machine! When we got stuck, it came to our rescue. Just a few of the dares I took: I added lime Jell-O, had my main character write a novel about me writing a novel, and more. Each helped me get to my 50,000-word goal.

And, you know what? After some polishing up, I’m rather proud of my first attempt. It’s rewarding to finish an outrageous activity like writing a novel. And there are moments of genius. Every once in awhile I wept at the turning of a beautiful phrase or a realistic conversation. I smiled at a sweet poem or what I considered strong character development. Through it all, I even wrote a story with a beginning, middle, and end. 

I am proud of my classroom library. It holds well over a thousand titles, many bestselling and award-winning children and young adult books. You know what else sits on my class bookshelf? Yes, my first novel, Turn Loose the Angels, along with several other NaNoWriMo novels written by my eighth graders over the years and published with CreateSpace through its sponsorship of NaNoWriMo. 

NaNoWriMo has been an amazing catalyst to blur the lines between professional and amateur authors. We are all authors. We write novels. This year, one of my students wrote this sweet last page in his novel, which was proudly published on CreateSpace:

“This is the best story I have ever written and it is written in 6000 words, 23084 letters, and 5997 spaces, all written in this story.”

So, how do you get started? 

Just do it, like I did the first time. If you’re a teacher and you ask your students to write a novel, you definitely need to write one too.
Be inspired by each other. I don’t think I would ever finish, if it weren’t for my eighth graders working furiously to finish their own novels. And students love this crazy adventure that has become a highlight of English class for five years now!
Use that Dare Machine!

You can read more about the nuts and bolts of how Denise led her students to tell their stories on her blog here.

Denise Krebs is a junior high teacher in rural Northwest Iowa. She is the chief learner in her classroom; in novel writing, and many other ways, her students teach her more than the other way around. She looks forward to writing her sixth novel in 2013, inspired by her student authors.