Twelve-year-old Fiona Fisher just published her first novel. “In Plain Sight” is the story of two girls, Beth and Anna, who team up to find their families and end up finding themselves along the way.

It’s exciting and touching and all the more impressive when considering that Fisher wrote it in a month — well, the first draft anyway. She is quick to acknowledge that the editing and publishing process took much longer.

“I kind of let it sit after I finished it in the winter,” said Fisher, “But then I picked it back up in the summer. We had to format it a lot. The editing took a really long time.”

Fisher began writing “In Plain Sight” in response to an assignment posed by her Redmond Middle School (RMS) teacher, Denise Gross, who decided to challenge her sixth-grade class to partake in National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo).

“I’m so proud of her,” said her Fisher’s father Jomo Fisher, who helped Fiona to self-publish on Amazon. “I’m definitely that annoying guy at work who won’t stop talking about his kid.”

NaNoWriMo takes place every November. Beginning on the first of the month, participants begin writing with the goal of finishing a novel, or 50,000 words, by 11:59 p.m. on November 30. Writers can track their progress on the NaNoWriMo website. They can also connect with other writers in their area and offer each other motivation in the form of pep talks, advice and Internet badges to decorate their NaNoWriMo dashboard.

Gross modified the middle school version of the program to her sixth-grade classroom, giving students workbooks to organize their thoughts and track their progress. They had time in class every day to write.

“I chose NaNoWriMo because I liked the way it treated students as novelists and writers instead of children,” said Gross. “The program challenges students at all academic levels to push themselves beyond what they think they are capable of.”

Gross broke the novel writing process into chunks, having her students spend a solid amount of time sketching out their ideas and making plans before actually writing.

“The workbook really makes you reorganize your way of thinking,” said Gross. “You have to think about all of your details up front, the plot points, the conflicts. You have pages where you just answer questions about your characters and begin to describe them like you’d describe your best friend. It really challenges you to make a plan and stick to it, rather than thinking, ‘I’ll just write and figure it out later.’”

This will be the second year that Gross assigns NaNoWriMo in her classes, and the second year that she herself participates, joining her students and proving she doesn’t just talk the talk. She walks the walk.

“I’ve always enjoyed writing and I’m definitely inspired by them to pursue my own dreams. It’s scary for me too, to share my work, even with my students, and I think it’s important that I feel that same kind of vulnerability if I’m asking them to open themselves up,” said Gross.

While most remember middle school with a shudder and seek a quick subject change, Gross thinks it’s the best age for kids who are trying to figure things out and hopes NaNoWriMo will help to keep them silly and creative a little while longer.

“This age is so incredible because they’re deciding what kind of person they want to be, what kind of student they want to be, what they want in terms of hopes and dreams and everything is still possible for them,” said Gross. “They can still do whatever they want and they’re willing to try.”

Marti Schodt is a student in the University of Washington Department of Communication News Laboratory.