Bucket List: Write a novel.

Not many teens can say that they have written a 50,000 word novel in a month. However, 21 PV sophomores can.

They were among the thousands of people all around the world who won in the National Novel Writing Month 2015.

National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) 2015 took place in November. In order to win, participants had to write a novel of at least 50,000 words in 30 days.

The novel could be about anything the author wanted it to be, due to their own individual imagination and creativity.

At the beginning of the month, there were 26 students from Mr. Matt Morone’s Honors 2 English class who showed interest in writing the 50,000 words.

“Who would ever do that? Who has the time to do that?” said sophomore Justine Touzot, describing her first thoughts about this challenge. “This is like something that you only get to do once or more times in your lifetime.”

“At first I was thinking, ‘no way am I doing this.’ And then I realized I’ve always wanted to try to push myself for something that I can do individually,” said sophomore Tyler Jacobson. Jacobson was the only male student who was able to accomplish his goal since the beginning of November. “This is really the first thing where I’ve tried to push myself. That’s why I really wanted a challenge here.”

The participants had to write an average of 1,667 words a day in order to finish the 50,000 words minimum.

“The most important thing I did was give students the time in class to work on this,” Morone said. “With the structure of our sophomore honors class, I was able to give the students opportunity to work on their novels during class time.”

He also provided books to his students as “mentor text” to help them throughout their writing, including two from the NaNoWriMo organization.

During the middle of the whole process, some of the students already thought of giving up in NaNoWriMo.

According to Touzot, she gathered all her emotions, which helped her while writing. On the other hand, Jacobson said that he just continued writing every day so that he would not fall behind.

“I think that some of the biggest challenges with teens nowadays are grit and perseverance,” Morone said. “One National Novel Writing Month hopefully will give them the confidence to pursue other really, really difficult challenges that are beneficial.”

He also said that his students tend to feel different from the authors of the books that they read in class. But after NaNoWriMo, they don’t feel different from them anymore.

Sophomore Emily Wolf from period 5 was able to write 75,000 words within the month. What motivated her was that she “wanted to prove everyone” her worth by going over 50,000.

NaNoWriMo was “unpredictable” and “electrifying,” said Touzot, and requires “endurance,” according to Jacobson.

These students said that they learned a lot from this experience, grew as writers, and developed confidence. They even get the added bonus of being able to say they have written a novel.

Morone is proud and blown away with his students’ performances and will be reading these novels once they are revised.