Services for Teens

Creative Writing
Flannery O'Connor once said that anyone who has survived childhood has enough material to write for the rest of his or her life. I believe this is true. Further, it’s astounding that every individual who’s currently fighting his or her way through high school doesn’t churn out volumes of narrative, personal or otherwise, every week. Certainly, there’s enough material for at least three or four nauseating reality shows and several collections of dark, satirical fiction.

Anyone who has attempted the art of creative writing will tell you that it’s harder than it looks. If they tell you anything but, they’re lying. Or, their name is Ernest Hemingway and you have an uncanny ability to talk to dead people. If this is the case, you probably have a best seller on your hands, no matter how poorly written it may be.

A creative writing workshop is an intensely useful and and often challenging experience. What sounds good in your head may not sound compelling on the page. Have you ever started to tell a story, only to get halfway through and realize that not only is the story not funny, but your friends are actually falling asleep? The workshop can be a test run -- the audience may or may not love your story but they will admire and sympathize with your efforts.

Or perhaps you just like a good prompt to get the wheels turning, good people and food full of refined sugar and preservatives. These are the elements, I believe, that are most conducive to creative writing. So if you are in high school (or of high school age), please stop by Wednesdays 7-9 p.m. In the meantime, click here and read the collected works of the March workshop. I hope the work you find there will inspire you to keep reading and writing, as it has certainly done that for me.

Katie

Download Creative Writing Workshop - March 2010