What IS the Stories of Tomorrow campaign? I’m so glad you asked…
The Office of Letters and Light, the wild and crazy people who bring the world NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) every November, are planning a rebuild of their Young Writer’s Program (YWP) website–and they need your help!
The Young Writer’s Program site offers all kinds of help and encouragement for young writers and the grown-ups (or reasonable facsimiles of grown-ups) who help guide them as writers in the month November and all year long–and it’s all free! We’re talking famous author pep talks, a Dare Machine (Make something blow up is a fun one, or invent a character who has no eyebrows–and gives everyone a different excuse for why), forums, step-by-step guides, FAQs, and more. Each author can set up their own profiles, track their writing progress online, and give all the deets about themselves and their novels–even posting excerpts and covers for others to ooh and aah over. It’s awesomely great fun; and did I mention it’s all free?
For educators, they offer common-core aligned lesson plans, workbooks, oodles of support, and even a free noveling kit–including a poster and stickers to track your students’ progress all month long and a class set of buttons. FREE.
Seriously, I’ve done this with my ELA classes the past four years, and IT’S FANTASTIC. Even though my first-timers inevitably look at me like I’ve lost my mind when I first bring it up (“We’re going to write a what? When?“) even the most writing resistant end up having a blast.
Last April, the people at OLL asked teachers and students for feedback on how to make their site even better, and now they’re ready to rebuild! The catch? It’s going to take cash to up the level of awesomeness they will bring to young writers this November…that’s where the Stories of Tomorrow campaign comes in.
The campaign runs from June 9 – 23, and you can read all about their plans for the $50,000 they hope to raise here. They’re already at $14,000, and are hoping to raise another $10,0oo tomorrow, June 17, on their EPIC DAY OF GIVING.
Here’s just a few of the ways tomorrow will be EPIC:
- there’s going to be prizes raffled off each hour of the day, from 6 AM to 4 PM–books, Kindle Paperwhites, writing software, and more!
- at the end of the day, a Kindle Fire will be raffled off to one lucky winner!
- Author Scott Westerfeld (as Mini-Moe #2 said when I told her–“He wrote Uglies! and Leviathan! He’s awesome!”) will match $10,000 raised with his own donation of $10,000–it’s like your donation, as the site says, is “epic squared”
- even if you don’t win a raffle prize, there’s cool donor gifts–halos for your NaNo profiles, stickers, postcards, and posters. Win-win all around!
Please consider donating, or even just giving the campaign a shout out through social media–today, tomorrow; any and every day between now and June 23.
89,500 young writers and more than 2,000 classrooms will thank you!