It’s NaNoWriMo time!

I’ve made sure I’m all registered on the official site, and cleaned up the buttons and banners in the sidebar.

Also got Katherine all configured for the Young Writers Program as well.  Last year her goal was 5K words.  This year, it’s 10K … kinda.

She wants to continue the story she was doing last year (wonder where she got that idea), but wants to do some rewriting of what she did then. Unlike with an adult where I’d advise against it, her writing skills have grown enough that I can understand where she’s going there.

The official way of figuring out recommended word count for kids is the “Word Goal Calculator,” which has you write “efficiently but still thoughtfully” for some period time, then figures out what you should be able to do.  Unfortunately, I just discovered that tool today, and I doubt Kay will have a chance to play with it tonight.  (If an opportunity comes up for it soon, we’ll give it a spin.)

With a little digging, I found an older page at the YWP site that has suggested word counts by grade level. Where I learned that Kay was writing last year as a high-performing 7th grader rather than the 6th grader she was.

So blending all that together, we’re going to set a goal with her of 10K words, but, any section from last year she does revision work on will be counted toward that number (any words she adds, plus the original words from last year), so in theory she may not need to write 10K (since she’s already at 5K) — but, depending on the amount of rewriting she wants to do, she might.

As for me — I … guess I’m ready!