I Love To Write Day

Today is the 8th annual I Love To Write Day. Check out their website for more information on who they are and how they got started. According to their site, I Love To Write Day is an opportunity for people of all ages to write something, such as a poem, an essay, a letter to an editor, a short story, start a novel, finish a novel, etc. The possibilities are endless.

Last year the organization signed up over 20,000 schools to participate. We homeschool, so writing is a big part of our day. Getting Neil to write his weekly spelling words is like pulling teeth sometimes, but writing short stories is a piece of cake for him. All four of my kids love to write. Give them a blank notebook and they'll turn it into a book. In fact, Nathan is working on a story right now called Wild, Wild Freaks. He has quite an imagination and comes up with really good story ideas.

As I blogged about recently, my main love are picture books. I love writing them and reading them. I grew up in the 70s and picture books were a lot longer than they are today. Back then, an average picture book could be 1000-1500 words, maybe more. Now the average is 500, sometimes even less. My Dilly books range from 400-600 words. What I read as a child are often referred to today as picture story books because they were so much longer. The current trend is to publish shorter picture books because parents are rushed on time, but still want to read to their children. In addition, some books are shorter to keep the child's interest. I suppose I'm just old-fashioned, because I still love those longer picture books.

Anyway, today is I Love To Write Day, so I think I'm going to work on a story idea that I've had for awhile. It's about an ostrich and a vulture, so it's an interesting combo. I hope everyone else can also make time to write something today, whether it be a poem, story, novel, a journal, a blog entry, or even a simple email to a friend. Have a happy I Love To Write Day!