Anyone else writing with your child?

Yes! My 10 year-old daughter and I are doing this together. :-)

I had done NaNo last year and ever since, she has been telling me that she wanted to do it. So, I signed her up with a goal of 10,000 words. So far, she has more written than I do. Haha!

How are things going for you and your daughter?

My 10-year-old son decided yesterday to write a story during NaNo. He's a slow typist, so he's writing in a blank journal he bought himself a year ago. Off to a roaring start, but his goal is modest--just 3,000 words in the month. I think it's attainable for him, though 10,000 or more would be probably well out of his range.

My eldest just decided last night that he's going to give it a try. He started a story last year, but I'm not sure that he went beyond a week or so of work on it. At his age, writing a large amount still feels more like work than fun, but both his mother and I are doing it this year, so I think he's feeling a little family pressure.

http://clickthing.blogspot.com

I'm so excited for my daughter. . .she's working hard, dealing with writer's block, and moving beyond.

The challenge right now is to avoid competition. She's upset that I can write faster than she can, thinking that I'm 'beating' her because I now have more words than she has. I've tried to put it into context, telling her that she is actually much further along than I am because her goal is fewer words. However, she still just looks at the total word count.

Any ideas out there on how to approach this with her? I'm thinking I might make a graph for her so that she can visualize percentages.

My kids are two, so not yet writing books, but I do have an idea for you. Dr. Wicked (writeordie.drwicked.com) has a widget you can get to post on your computer or web site, much like the NaNoWriMo green word tracker. You can change the number of words that's your final goal, however. So if she has that, the line will move at the proper rate and she can focus back on her own project. I will say, as a published writer who works with published and beginning writers and everyone in between, that dealing with competition and learning to stay focused on your own work is one of the great challenges for all writers. You are getting your daughter off to a good start by handling this young!

Happy writing!
Elizabeth
http://elizabethstark.com

"There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are." --Sommerset Maugham

I am very cranky that these forums don't send you an email when responses come to your post. I got busy and didn't even notice anyone had replied until today!

mclemens: I can totally relate to what you're saying. I think writing is feeling more like homework that an exciting challenge for my daughter. I think I've let her down so far not taking her to more social events to make it more fun.

pjd: my daughter hasn't learned to touch type yet, so she's writing in a journal also. I'm impressed at her output when she sits down and writes! (Of course, she doesn't always want to sit down and write, and she will only do so if prompted.)

tortugadreams: I think if you talk about your word counts together in percentages, then it's easier to compare your word counts. If you're both at 20%, it feels like a fair race.

I'm struggling with how hard to push her. I'll be on a trip next week, and she'll be going on a trip the week after that, so we both need to get ahead of the game. Unfortunately, she's behind. I don't want it to feel like a chore, but I also want her to have the satisfaction of meeting her goal. What do you guys think?

Never mind--Holy Cow she wrote like a she-devil this evening and knocked out something like 1100 words, and now she's ahead of the game!

I love reading her work. I gotta say it is much more descriptive than my own writing!

I'm not writing with my child, since I don't have one (I hope not o.0), but I'm writing with my mom. :D I'll let her know about this topic when she gets home.

Dimensional:

Two friends.
One alien.
A boy who lost his memory.
And a low-tech spaceship.

Versus Csat of Eill and Nathaniel Cutting.
Ooh... scary. o.0
-snort-
No, really. Be afraid. Be very afraid. If they get hold of the Taira...

-KABOOM!-

I am the mother of Rattyjol and she asked me to join nano as her 13th birthday present. How could I refuse? She's a real writer, she writes all the time and she has a story and poems in a book self published by the writer's guild, shadowsowner888.forumotion.net. I've done a little novel writing in the past, but never finished anything, so nano is a great experience for both of us. We sit side by side with our lap tops and type away. We're doing pretty evenly on the word count. I find her to be very inspiring.

Rattyjol actually joined both young writers program and nano, and her young writers goal was 20,000 but she surpassed that the second week. She's definitely on track to get to 50K.

I'm so proud.

Alizac