Throughout the month of November, students in the Dublin High School Young Writers Club participated in a world-wide event called Nanowrimo, or the National Novel Writing Month.

Participants of Nanowrimo are encouraged to write 50,000 words in 30 days, but they are allowed to set their own target word count.  

This creative writing challenge is completed annually by people all over the world.  Its main goal is to encourage writing and raise money to buy books and supplies for impoverished areas. This is the seventeenth year that Nanowrimo has taken place, and the organization has already raised over 800,000 dollars.  

Students at DHS say that the writing challenge was a formidable task.

“I was a little daunted by the number of words that we needed to fit in one month.”  said freshmen Rijuta Vallishayee, who took on the Nanowrimo challenge.

“I was nowhere close to reaching my goal. There’s always next year though.”  said Michelle Morris, who took a different approach on the challenge by attempting to write a script.

Senior Alexandra Stassinopoulos, the president of the DHS Young Writers Club who participated in Nanowrimo last year, said,  “I was frustrated that I had to put a long term project aside, but it was fun to create characters that you don’t have to be careful with.  It’s a one and done project. You don’t have to continue with it.”

Along with the challenge itself in November, the Nanowrimo organization also holds Camp Nanowrimo in the summer to work specifically with children and teenagers.  It has also recently released a young writers’ program that is in the beginning stages and will most likely be completely functional by next year.

Without a doubt, the month of November has been a busy one for members of the DHS Young Writers Club.