My oldest child wrote a novel when she was 13. It wasn’t very long, but it had a plot, dialogue, character development, and a conclusion that hinted at a sequel. We still have several paperback copies of her book, which she received after participating in NaNoWriMo, the National Novel Writing Month.

NaNoWriMo, which takes place each November, challenges writers to draft an entire novel in just one month. While you can do outlining, character profiles, and other planning in advance, the actual writing should start November 1. For my daughter, like many other participants, the 30‐​day deadline really spurred her to keep at it.

NaNoWriMo’s Young Writers Program is specifically geared towards writers who are 18 and younger. At the beginning of the month, participants choose a word count goal for their novel. Middle and high kids sign a “contract” pledging that “notions of craft, brilliance, grammar, and spelling are to be chucked right out the window, where they will remain, ignored, until they are retrieved for the editing process.” Younger children have a simpler version of the contract. The goal isn’t perfection—Evil Inner Editors are banned—but persistence and progress. Both contracts include celebrations at the end of the process.

My daughter participated eight years ago, and the program has changed some since then. Unfortunately, the biggest change seems to be that they no longer send participants free paperback copies of their completed books. But they include guidance for getting them printed through an online publisher. Receiving a printed copy can be a great incentive for your aspiring writers.

There’s also an online platform with various writer resources. For kids age 13 and older, there are chatroom that are moderated by NaNoWriMo staff. My daughter didn’t participate in any online parts of NaNoWriMo, so I can’t speak to those. Like most online activities, parents may want to use caution in deciding how much access their kids have to the platform.

I was happy to see the site still includes workbooks, with one aimed at elementary students and one for middle and high school students. My daughter found the workbook to be very helpful—especially for sketching out the plot and character development. The workbooks can be directly accessed, downloaded, and then used electronically or printed. This means students can use them without getting involved in the online platform, which may appeal to some parents and teachers.

Parents, teachers, librarians, and other facilitators, can register for educator accounts, which give them access to the student workbooks, lesson plans, a free classroom kit, and educator forums.

If your children or students participate in NaNoWriMo, I strongly encourage you to get at least one printed copy if possible. There’s a discount link for a self‐​publishing company called Blurb. And if I calculated it correctly, a 100‐​page book would only cost around $5 per copy through Blurb. One of my younger children participated in NaNoWriMo when she was nine, but we never printed her book—and she’s still bummed about it.

NaNoWriMo can be a great way to get kids interested in writing. The free‐​flowing nature of it appeals to students who don’t respond well to rules and structure. But the workbooks can help provide structure for writers who want it. And they can incorporate their own interests in their novels—space, dinosaurs, art, video games, or whatever strikes their fancy. Re‐​reading my daughter’s book, which features four siblings who get shipwrecked on an island, you can tell it was written during our kids’ Gilligan Island phase.

Our only regret when it comes to NaNoWriMo is not being more diligent with it in later years. It was a great experience for my daughter that left her with a tangible memento of her hard work. But more importantly, it helped her enjoy writing, which continues benefitting her to this day.