October 20 is the National Day on Writing.  This is an event that was created by the National Council of Teachers of English, NCTE,  “to help make writers from all walks of life aware of their craft.”  (Wouldn’t you think that a bunch of composition teachers would choose a more efficient way to name their organization, like calling it the English Teacher National Council and save the use of two “of”s?)  The U.S. Senate passed a resolution on Oct. 8, declaring Oct. 20 the National Day on Writing!

Colorado organizations are celebrating the day in a variety of ways.  The Denver Writing Project has linked to the NCTE who has created a gallery for writers to post their work at http://galleryofwriting.org/galleries/366137.  Anyone can post their poems, stories, etc. for the world to see.  It will go public on Oct. 20, but you’ll be able to post work until June of 2010.  Colorado has its own gallery at http://www.galleryofwriting.org/galleries/55020.

Douglas Hesse, the director of writing at the University of Denver and Colorado curator in the digital National Gallery of Writing, has written an interesting article about the future of writing in today’s Denver Post, entitled “Put Forth Our Best Writing Selves.” In it he discusses what he sees as the future of writing in a twitter, instant-message, chat board, text messaging, blog dominated reading environment.

We’re all writers.  What can we do personally to celebrate? If you're also a teacher, what can you do in your classroom on the 20th to celebrate your student's writing?