Stories of Tomorrow: Running 5K... and Writing a Million Words

Tomorrow’s stories start in all sorts of places: on the drive to work, or at the movie theater. One constant source of inspiration? The classrooms that tackle NaNoWriMo through our Young Writers Program. Today, YWP educator Meghann Donohue talks about becoming a writer athlete, and why you should support tomorrow’s writers: 

I have always known, in my heart, that I am a writer. I may not be the most disciplined, or most productive, and I am certainly not a novelist—yet—but I have always been good with words.

You know what I haven’t been good at? Anything super-athletic. I don’t have an athletic body, and I don’t particularly enjoy sweating. I am not one of those people that can’t live a day without exercise. However, in an effort to get in shape, and because so many people seem to love it, I started running last spring. Using phone apps and motivating music, I made myself get out on the trail 2-3 times a week. With the encouragement of my family, I signed up for my first 5K, and suddenly, I had a purpose. I was accountable. My pride was on the line.

The day of my first 5K, I alternated from feeling sick to my stomach, to a sense of disbelief that I was really going to do this. I got out there and ran the entire thing—every step—and there is very little that has made me prouder.

'So,' you may be thinking 'What does any of this have to do with writing?'

For lots and lots of my students, they have the reverse issue. They are young, and fit, and love to get outside and work their bodies. What they don’t like to do is sit at a desk silently and write. Words on paper seem foreign to them, especially if you don’t give them a predetermined topic. They struggle with their stamina and often consider themselves “done” when they reach the end of the page. Furthermore, they have no purpose. They have no goal they want to accomplish, except to make the teacher happy.

I needed to find them their own writing 5K. I had adult friends who had participated in NaNoWriMo, but had no idea the Young Writers Program existed until another teacher told me about it. In September, I talked my whole teaching team into making every student participate, and in November, we registered over 300 13- and 14-year-old students. We provided them with guidance on how to pick a topic, checked out laptops for them every day, played mood music, showed them model writing, and hung the charts and gave them stickers and pins. We talked about it constantly. It was our November.

And do you know what happened? They became writing athletes. They whispered about it in the halls like it was the big Saturday night game. They fought hard to get those stickers. They drilled themselves with their writing, doing word sprints and logging hours at home. Some of them even downloaded apps on their phone so they could “type” while on the bus. They wore their pins as if they were medals and high-fived each other when they reached the crucial moment of achieving their goal.

They ran every step of their writing 5k, and I could not be more proud.
In the end, the entire 8th grade class of 350 students wrote one million words. One million. More importantly, they found a purpose to their writing, a sense of achievement and community that they had never felt before. During end-of-year evaluations, it comes up over and over again that NaNoWriMo was the greatest writing experience they have had to date.

I may not be totally hooked on running, but I am hooked on NaNoWriMo YWP. I am so hopeful that having completed their first writing 5k, my students will come back again and again to do more. If that is the case, I would love for them to use a web site that is even more enhanced, engaging, and powerful. So go ahead and donate to support the Young Writers Program today. Consider it a donation to a charity race… because, for us, it is.

Meghann Donohue is a Nationally Board Certified teacher who teaches 8th grade English. Aside from teaching and being an English department chair, she is working on her first YA fantasy novel and raising her two young kids. She still occasionally finds time to go running.