November is National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo).

NaNoWriMo's tips for writing a 50,000-word novel in one month , tip #3:

"Tell everyone you know that you're writing a novel in November. This will pay big dividends in Week Two, when the only thing keeping you from quitting is the fear of looking pathetic in front of all the people who've had to hear about your novel for the past month. Seriously. Email them now about your awesome new book. The looming specter of personal humiliation is a very reliable muse."

So here I am, telling.   

The goal is to hit 50,000 words in 30 days.  I'm requesting that you all prod, push, goad, and guilt me relentlessly from November 1 through November 30 of this year.  Ask me my wordcount and if it's not on track, call me a loser.  Hold me accountable.  Humiliate me as necessary. 

Don't ask me what the story is about, because I don't know yet.  It's quite likely I won't know until it's over.  As long as I'm getting words on the page...that's all that matters.  I'll worry about the rest in December.

If you'd like to join the party, visit www.nanowrimo.org and sign yourself up!

Well, either I'm getting rebellious in my old age, or I've just learned to quit worrying about pleasing everybody. I see a problem, and I'm willing to take on whomever I have to in order to make the problem go away. This is very unlike me, but I've done it several times lately.

Today is the latest example. I got back to work today after having my minor surgery yesterday. My friend and partner Julie was upset because of a lack of support from our new dean of students. Our school has a SCHOOL rule against chewing gum. Most of us understand that whether we think a rule is important or not, we have to enforce ALL of the rules or we teach kids it's okay to choose which rules they're going to obey. It's not about chewing gum; it's about respect for authority and defiance of rules.

Julie had written a referral to the dean for a girl whom she had caught chewing gum 4 times. Now before a kid gets a referral to the dean, the teacher must give one warning for a first offense and make parent contact for a second offense. Referral to the dean is the THIRD step. So Julie has dutifully given a warning, given a second step detention with parent contact, and finally turned in the third step referral to the dean.

The dean, who is new this year by the way, sends her an email stating that he will NOT pull a kid out of class for chewing gum. If Julie wants her to have another detention, Julie should make another parent contact and keep the student after school herself.

Julie wrote back saying that she saw this as an issue of defiance (rightly so) and asked if she could meet with him to discuss it. Well, the meeting did not go well. He basically told her that she was making a big deal out of nothing, and she was the only teacher upset about gum chewing.

All of this had happened by the time I returned to school today, and Julie was extemely upset and emailed me the whole story. I did what I could to calm her down and said we'd get another teacher and possibly a union rep to go back to the dean and discuss this again.

The more I thought about it however, the less satisfied I was with that solution. This was still going to be Julie making a fuss about the issue. I felt that it was important for him to know that Julie was not the only one who feels this is an issue. In fact, the topic had been brought up in a meeting last spring, and the general consensus was that all teachers needed to enforce this rule as well as all other rules.

So (obviously too late to make a long story short), I sent an email to every teacher in the school. I explained the situation. I said that while I respect the dean, I believe we needed to make it clear to him that he is mistaken on this issue. I asked them to support our colleague by replying to my email with the statement, "I agree," and that I would deliver the emails to the dean.

By the time I left school this afternoon, I had received 22 emails in support. I expect to receive more tomorrow.

This sounds so unlike me! I told Julie that if I hadn't been lightheaded from blood loss, I would never have done it!