All of this by hand, I might add

Remember how I told you the Bandit’s 5th grade class was participating in NaNoWriMo – National Novel Writing Month? Well, they were. They were expected to write 10,000 words during the month of November. I thought that was a serious amount of words to expect from 10-year-olds, but I was gung ho. I’ve signed up for NaNoWriMo every year and I’ve never completed it once. Never even gotten close. The adult version is 50,000 words. It’s really, really hard to do if you have a full time job and a family and requirements of sleep. I’m in awe of people who pull it off. I’m just not the kind of writer who can write words just for the sake of words. My brain pushes against the NaNoWriMo philosophy. My first drafts are pretty damn clean. I labor over every sentence.

I was trying to be über supportive of my boy. When he needed to play some catch up, I took him to Starbucks a couple of times. I figured I’d show him how the real writers do it, so he got a Frappuccino and I got a latte and we wrote for hours. It was good for me as well. Of course I’m behind in my word count too so this was hardly a hardship.

His assignment is due tomorrow, December 1st in line with the end of the National competition. He’s been behind even though he did write over the long weekend. As you writers know, it’s hard to do when there’s so much family stuff going on.

This afternoon when school let out, I called him. “You prepared to write like the wind tonight?”

“Yep,” he said. “That’s the plan. I’m going to write eighteen pages today.” He was full of confidence. Eighteen pages — no big deal.

“Wow,” I said, trying to control the skepticism in my voice. “That’s really…industrious of you.”

“Yep. Gotta go.”

I hit end on my phone and stared at it. I’d never written eighteen pages in one day in my life. Ever. That’s some serious writing right there, my friends. I went down the hall and told Ava his plan and then we laughed and laughed – not because we didn’t want him to succeed, but wow that’s a naïve goal.

When I got home from work, he was busy. Before dinner, he was in full concentration mode. After dinner, he continued to write away. We let him stay up a little late because he was really cranking out pages.

I shit you not – that boy wrote 12 pages today. TWELVE! That’s outrageous. I’m seriously proud of him. Stop yourself if you think he shouldn’t be so far behind at the end. I know hardly any writers who don’t have a major push the last several days before their book is due. Obviously, I’d like him to take this as a learning experience and not wait to the last minute to do the bulk of an assignment, but I don’t hold out a lot of hope. I’m a person who talks like I’m going to work at a nice steady pace, but until there’s a deadline looming then OHMYGODINEEDTOFINISHTHIS!!

He set his alarm clock for early the next morning and plans to add a few more pages by the start of school. I have every faith he’s going to pull this off.