Greed

Thanks to an extra day off school for the end of the marking period, I had to rearrange my schedule and do my elementary Young Writers group on Thursday. Because it wasn't our usual day, less kids came. That was fine by me, I still had a room full.

To conserve my stock of prizes for my huge unanticipated group this year, I decided to consolidate our two shifts of word wars into one. Waiting an extra five minutes got all of the forth graders and the majority of the fifth graders included all in one word writing frenzy.

Last year I'd discovered that the same three kids could write far faster than the rest and won the majority of the prizes so this year I changed my prize tactics. If they write more than a hundred words in ten minutes, they get to enter. Most of them can do it and the rest will if they keep working at it. Out of those, I pick four to win small prizes.

That meant that the first time with two groups, I was out eight prizes already. We meet twice a week. I didn't exactly have sixty-four prizes. Not even close. Half that, I could handle between stickers, funky paperclips, erasers and other misc things I'd picked up throughout the year on sale. Not to mention since my middle school group seems to be a complete bust thanks to the teachers (I'm still fuming about that lack of any effort), I can use their prizes for my abudant elementary group.

We got done with our word race. I picked the winners. They get their prizes. A fifth grader piped up, "Um, what about the fifth grade word race."

"You just did one."

"Yeah, but it was with the forth graders."

"You entered to win a prize with the forth graders. That was the one word race we're going to do. I don't have enough prizes to do each grade seperately each time."

"So get more prizes."

I refrained from glaring and took a deep breath. "I pay for all of these prizes out of my pocket. I can't just keep buying more stuff for all of you. We have a very large group. Normally we'd only do two prizes. I was being generous by giving you four chances at winning something."

"Can't you just go to the dollar store?"

"I did. I buy prizes for you and the middle school. That's around forty dollars of my own money for you guys to win prizes. I don't get anything out of it. You do. We don't have to have prizes at all. It's just for fun."

"Oh." Yet, she seemed far less than impressed.

Some kids, I tell ya....

NaNoWriMo Day 3

Sitting at 4224 words so far. Not bad. Not great, but I'll take it considering how busy I am with everything else. At least I'm semi close to being at my daily goal by the end of the day - which I've yet to do this year... in all two previous days.

My first short story is turing out pretty well. Then again, I started with the only one I had a full summary for, so I suppose that helps considerably. Story number one is about a healer who is forced to heal a child. In order to save the child's life, she must die. She's not real happy about that after the fact and does her best to get even.

I thinking it will wrap up just under 5k. Which means I have to start pulling teeth on a less developed idea.

Our first regional write-in last night was quite a sucess. We took over a good portion of the tiny Barnes & Noble cafe and monoplized their single outlet with our powestrips. All your power will be ours! Mwahahaha!

Today was try two at kicking off the middle school YWP. Yesterday's attempt allowed me to write a thousand words while I hung out in the library, but only yielded a single student - one poor girl I cooerced to come over who had participated last year. She wasn't thrilled to be the only one there. I thought more were coming. Honest! Including my own son, who managed to forget about the meeting in the two hours between getting his lunch pass and finishing his lunch. Can you see me rolling my eyes?

Other than my son remembering to show up and the other girl returning, try two was as dismal as try one. I even waited for two hours this time. Though that allowed me to almost catch up on my word count, I was really hoping for more kids.

The problem seems to be a total lack of communication. Either the teachers aren't reading the email about promoting the program to the students or they just aren't promoting it. I know the students aren't getting the message because the ones I have talked to (in trying to lure them in) haven't heard one word about it. Sigh. I feel rather powerless over that situation since I have very little influence in that large school.

Tomorrow we have our second elementary YWP writing meeting. At least I know most of them are gung ho about the program and are having fun with it. That makes me feel a little better.

NaNoWriMo Day 1

I wish I had a stellar first day word count to report, but alas, I have yet to start. I should have plenty of time later tonight to pound out my 1667 words for the day. Besides, I have my kids to challenge to word wars once they get home from school.

Our first writing meeting of the elementary YWP went splendidly. I still have around 40 kids after our two planning meetings. I'd hoped to have a solid body count, but things were a little hectic with two different grade groups (and large groups at that) coming in at diffferent times. All the kids were very well mannered and polite. Several of them even made trips back in to hand me pencils they'd mistakenly walked out with. I have to remember to compliment their teachers.

Middle School YWP launches tomorrow. I'm concerned that we'll have a less than stellar turn out again, despite having the program open to an entire school. Last year we relied on the teachers to pitch the program to the kids. That didn't work out so well, but it seems that's the method we're left with again this year.

I was up until midnight last night, madly typing up the regional 'get ready to write' email that I thought I'd had finished days before and then had read ten times since, adding and subtracting here and there... only to double the word count in the last two hours before sending it out at 11:57. I'm considering counting my bi-weekly regional emails as part of my 50k. ;) The late night made for a bleary morning where no writing got done, that's for sure.

So now, with a girl scout meeting, a boy scout meeting and an hour or two of work ahead of me, I'm off to squeeze in 1667 words. Best of luck to the rest of you who are participating!

The day before NaNo

Twas the day before NaNo and all through the house was much sticking and grumbling as I scittered about like a mouse. The Halloween party had left quite a mess and here and there guests had left parts of their dress.

Cups and bottles, returnables galore, I wasn't sure which chore I disliked more. With much sweeping, vaccuming and mopping ahead, I really just wanted to curl up and go back to bed. But there were decorations, seven totes of them, to put away before I could begin my novel the very next day.

With visions from our awesome regional kick off party engergizing me to write, I began to clean in hopes of finishing before night. The morning would bring the challenge to produce 1667 words and I knew more than half of them would resemble turds. But that's ok, that's what Nano's about, thinking up the story, writing it down, getting it out.

And now with much work ahead for the day, I must stop this horrible attept to rhyme and go on my way. Tomorrow we write!

Attack of the Young Writers Pt 2

We had our second meeting today. I was thrilled to see that my 'do you REALLY want to participate' speech had sunk in and decreased my number by twenty-some. Thirty odd kids who really want to be there is way easier to manage for me. I happily went about our planning meeting with a smile and answered questions from enthusaistic young writers.

Our meeting wrapped up with lots of grins and chattering about cover art they'd all be working on over the weekend. They promised to be back on monday for our first day of actual novel writing. With our satisfying meeting concluded, I packed up my supplies and headed to the office to squirrel them away until monday's meeting.

That's when I happened upon the 'oh crap, that was today?' face of one of the teachers. Again. And I'd even gone in before school even started (because I was there for a special parent student donut breakfast thing we do) to remind all the teachers that we had a meeting a lunch time. But no. I still had a missing group who'd never been down to see me. Ahhhh!

I ended up doing a very quick classroom pitch. Yep, you guessed it, I'm back around forty-five kids again.

We'll see how many show up on monday when the real writing starts.

On tomorrow's agenda: Our regional NaNoWriMo kickoff party with an unbelievable amount of RSVPs over last year. It should be fun!