This week I am meeting with students who are interested in joining a National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) student support group for the month of November. The idea came a few weeks ago when the creative writing teacher at my school was explaining how she felt so swamped with "extra" student writing. She, of course, agrees that it's fantastic that her students love to write recreationally but that it is overwhelming to correct what she assigns much less the thirty pages two students wrote over the weekend for fun.
Since I knew it was getting close to November anyway, I started thinking about creating a school extracurricular activity to help those students who do love to write recreationally for enjoyment and are looking for an outlet of student support, information, and objectives. The meeting this week is an informational meeting to first explain what NaNoWriMo is and then the steps to prepare for November 1st.
The problem is that I have personally never participated (until this year). So I don't know where to begin myself, much less with my students. I have spend a few hours researching and have started a class website on the Young Writer's Program and have saved the PDF workbook to print off at at school. I'm currently googling different writing blogs, especially student-run, as resources for students but beyond that I'm sort of at a loss.
How do we start? I know outlining is important but how can I help my students gather and organize their thoughts? Do you know of any resources? Do you have any suggestions? Do you have a favorite writing blog?
Can someone leave me a crumb trail in the right direction?