Creative Writing II students have spent the entire month of Nov. writing 50,000 word novels on any topic of their choice. The students are participating in an annual writing challenge through a program called National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), where they must create a new novel starting on Nov. 1 and ending on Nov. 30.

“My students actually came to me and asked me if they could participate in NaNoWriMo and I just couldn’t say no,” Creative Writing and English teacher Kathleen Mathis said. “I am proud of all of them and I love watching how excited they are with this project. They really are growing as writers.”

Creative Writing II students spent Oct. developing ideas and planning out their novels.

“It actually wasn’t hard for me to come up with an idea,” senior Becky Burke said. “I completed my novel a few days before Nov. ended, because I wrote about 2,000 words every day. I was able to get it done at a decent time.”

“It took me a long time to come up with a topic for my novel,” junior Katie Thomas said. “I figured out an idea though and now my novel is about a girl who has been basically living a lie. She found that her parent aren’t actually her parents, and now she is going on a journey with her best friend to find her mom.”

With the novels complete, the month of Dec. will be used for editing.

“Writing a novel has been a stressful process, but I had fun and it was worth all of the hard work,” Thomas said.