5 Days Until NaNoWriMo

Before starting today, I presented my personal writer's survival kit. Included were:
No Plot? No Problem! by Chris Baty. I explained how the book was loaded with advice, inspiration, and yes, the occasional kick in the pants. I let my class know that I would share little nuggets of wisdom from the book on occasion.
My dragon muse/totem: I explained how it was a silly little thing, but helped me to remember that what I am doing is silly, but no less important.















My two magic writing hats: One is just a regular baseball cap with a clover and DUBLIN printed across the front (for luck, get it?) and the other, for particularly frisky writing, is my daughter's knitted viking hat, complete with horns and blonde braids.
Chocolate: Lots of chocolate.
Gala apples: Loads and LOADS of Gala apples.
Dr. Pepper: I'm not a coffee person, but I do love my caffeine. Dr. Pepper is my drink of choice.
Music: Anything orchestral and epic. Soundtracks to the Lord of the Rings, Jurassic Park, Pirates of the Caribbean, and Star Wars feature heavily.
Then we worked on creating the villains for our stories. We had a short discussion about how some stories don't seem to have villains, like Hatchet, by Gary Paulsen. This led to a discussion about the different types of conflict in fiction. The three we concentrated on were:
Man vs. Man
Man vs. Nature
Man vs. Self
(I left out Man vs. Society and Man vs. Technology/Fantasy...I thought the above would suffice for 5th grade.)
Brian Robeson is, of course, the protagonist in Hatchet, but since there is no "bad guy," who is the villain? My kids responded that the villain must be nature, and that Hatchet is a Man vs. Nature story. I suggested that Hatchet, to a lesser degree, is also a Man vs. Self story, since so much of the story deals with Brian dealing with his own inner turmoil and lack of self-confidence.
After this discussion, they had some time to work on and share the profiles for their own villains. Some of the villains they came up with were crazy and eccentric, some were pretty basic bad-guy times, and some of them were chillingly scary. It's truly wonderful seeing their minds light up and then their hands go flying across the page as they create their own characters. The freedom they've been given to write whatever they feel like writing has really opened them up to creativity they never knew existed. More than a few of them have told me, "I can't wait until November 1st! I want to start writing now!"
Ah, teaching heaven. I have kids begging me to write. How often does that happen in 5th grade?
Tomorrow, we'll start working on our plots. I'm really excited, because this is where the ideas will really start flowing.
Stay tuned, NaNos!