Students churn out novels

COUNCIL BLUFFS — Thirteen students from St. Albert Catholic School participated in a National Novel Writers Month contest in November.

They didn’t seek to win cash or a take-home trophy — they wrote because they could. In fact, eighth-grader Lindsey Hunter and seventh-grader Miranda Patten continue to work on their novels even though the contest ended last month.

The rules of the contest, known whimsically as NaNoWriMo, were simple: Set a word count goal, start writing Nov. 1 and write as much as possible for 30 days.

NaNoWriMo organizers set the word count goal at 50,000 in the adult writing contest, but said the “Young Writers Program allows participants who are 17 years old and younger to set reasonable, yet challenging, word-count goals.”

Lindsey, 13, and Miranda, 12, exceeded their word count goals. Lindsey has written more than 10,300, and Miranda has written more than 10,200 words so far. Both said they sat down to write, the ideas began to form, the words to flow.

“The thoughts just flew out of me, and I wrote whenever I could,” Miranda said

“The ideas kind of came, and I never had to think about it. My novel is a fantasy, kind of, with magic, vampires, things of that nature,” Lindsey said.

Miranda described her novel as “a love story, a sort of love triangle, only more than a triangle.” Something along the lines of “Romeo and Juliet,” only with another Romeo and an additional Juliet?

“Yeah, that’s pretty close,” Miranda said.

Both novels are still in progress. Neither girl will tell too much of the story, nor will they give away the endings.

“Mine’s almost finished,” Lindsey said, and will divulge only that “the vampires are the bad guys” and that it’s a tale of “good versus evil.”

Miranda, too, said she’s almost finished and has decided it will be titled, “A Love Story Everyone Wants.”

“I know how it’s going to end. I wrote the ending. Now I have to tie it all together,” Miranda added.

They are both committed to finishing their novels.

Teacher Michelle Kovars said everyone in the class wrote “to some degree, with various computer crashes, plot changes and other catastrophes.”

However, the National Novel Writers Month contest had a simple goal: “Get them writing. Most people have a novel in them. At least write a first draft. Even a really terrible first draft is better than a novel never written,” Kovars said.

She also loved the concept because she has learned that “the more outlandish an idea, the more the students get behind it. A 12-year-old writing a novel? That’s crazy.”

In all, the St. Albert writers managed to write more than 46,000 words, which comes out to more than 60 words per hour, writing both day and night. Now, Kovars said, “My class wants to keep it going. They want to form a writing club, and some want to look for publishing sources.”

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