It was October 1, 2025. Our inaugural Young Novelist Challenge page was published, the shiny new classroom resources were posted, and November was right around the corner. But were we ready?
The anticipation of our first Young Novelist Challenge felt a lot like the first time I told my students that they would be writing their own novels in November: what if the size of the challenge scared them away? What if they had no stories to tell? What if no one wrote anything?
Then I remembered how enthusiastically my students dove into writing their stories, crafting characters and plotting plots like they were born for the challenge. So I unclenched my jaw, released a deep breath, and trusted that we had done all that we could (in a very quick three months) to support teachers and young writers in the NaNoWriMo challenge.
When we launched our NaNo 2.0 newsletter, the subscription sign up included a checkbox for those interested in a newsletter for young writers and educators. We were thrilled to see over 400 people check that box! But it turned out we weren’t quite ready to put out a separate newsletter just for young novelists. Instead we shared YNC tips from teachers and authors within our newsletter and blog.
A mountaintop moment for me was when rock star author Chris Crutcher wrote a pep talk for our young novelists. My students loved his books (we had an entire shelf in our classroom just for him), so I knew his novel-writing wisdom would inspire and motivate students to keep writing.
Thanks to the generosity of some classroom teachers, we were able to share four blog posts of tips for teachers, plus three more pep talks for students. We have more planned for this year and would love to include you in the line up!
Since November, almost 100 more have checked that box for a YNC newsletter [cue happy dance]. We are looking forward to bringing a dedicated newsletter for teachers, librarians, parents, and students to you soon.
Also high on our priority list was to spread the word that the classroom resources are back and we are here to support teachers and students. My favorite avenue for that was joining Tavia Stewart on an Educator Forever podcast with Lily Jones. Although I’ve been out of the writing classroom for seven years, that podcast reminded me of the tremendous joy that NaNoWriMo brought to me and my students, and the thrill of continuing that joy through our Young Novelist Challenge.
One of our frustrations came from not having a way for teachers to log in to our YNC page. That meant we didn’t know how many teachers were using our resources or how many students were writing novels. We hope to address that for the 2026 challenge and look forward to sharing those stats with you.
Now we are digging through old emails and throwing the net wide to find more of you who are supporting young writers. What do you need from us? How can we better support you and your writers? And would you like to contribute to the cause by sharing resources, writing pep talks, or joining our scrappy team of volunteers? If you have writing tips or classroom strategies that you would be willing to share, please let us know!
We hope you will reach out to us with all the ways we can support you as you support students who are writing their own novels! We are here for you.