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When I was in fourth grade, my teacher Mrs. Dobrow did a lot of creative writing with the class. Her lessons on creative writing were terrific and one of my favorite parts of school.
At the end of fifth grade, I had a memory book as part of leaving elementary school—a colored journal that everyone wrote in. I went back to Mrs. Dobrow, one of my favorite teachers, and she wrote this in my memory book: “I expect to see you in print someday.”
After a while I forgot about it, but many years later, as an adult, I found the memory book again and read through it. And there was Mrs. Dobrow’s note to me from my own childhood, predicting that I would become a writer! I couldn’t believe it. Well, it just goes to show that some teachers are just fantastic. Mrs. Dobrow really started me on the creative writing path.
In sixth grade, the class had creative writing contests. My teacher gave us the beginning of a story and we had to finish it. Then we each read our story to the class, and the class voted for the stories they liked best. I won those contests sometimes, but I lost them a lot too. The student whose story got voted the best most often was a very quiet girl. She was shy and didn’t speak much to the other kids. She only had a few friends. But when she wrote a story everyone listened. Me, too. And many of the kids voted for her story as the best one, even if they weren’t her friend. She deserved it and we all knew it. Meanwhile, I did my best to write the stories I wanted to write. I never cared too much about winning contests. I just liked to write. Well, it was nice to win the contests once in a while. I admit it.
That same year, in sixth grade, I decided to write my own Choose-Your-Own-Adventure story and try to publish it. Choose-Your-Own-Adventure stories, if you don’t know it already, are the ones where you decide what you want to do next, and you turn to a different page of the book depending on your decision. I read a lot of them and they were good for passing the time, but they were also very simple and not really the best books. Actually, a lot of them were pretty bad.
I decided, “I can write one of those!” So I did, and it came to about eighty pages. I typed it up, bound it, and sent it to a publisher with a letter saying that kids might like reading a book if it was written by another kid. They sent the manuscript back to me with a form letter telling me they weren’t interested. I wasn’t that surprised. I turned it into my sixth grade teacher instead, and he gave me an A+. That was nice of him.
How Can You Learn More About Writing Stories?
I think the best thing to do is to read your stories to other kids and ask them what they think of the stories. Before you ask them, though, tell them one rule they should follow. They should first tell you things they like about the story, and only after should they tell you things they don’t like about the story.
When kids tell you things they don’t like about the story, try not to take it personally. Everybody has different tastes and not everyone likes the same stories.
After you ask a bunch of kids to hear your story and tell you what they think, spend a day or a week writing the story again. Try to make it an even better story. Then read the new version of the story to the same kids and see what they say.
If you don’t like a story so much anymore and don’t want to rewrite it, of course that’s fine too. Go ahead and write a different story. The point is that you should be having fun when you write. Writing really good stories can be hard work, but there should always be some part of it that’s fun too. Good luck!
Books Recommendations
If you’ve already read The Witch’s Guide to Cooking with Children and you are looking for other books to read, here are five books that I like a lot. You might like them too or you might not. Everyone has different tastes, of course. But these are favorites of mine.
Tuck Everlasting by Natalie Babbitt
More
If you would like to know a little more about me, you can read this short interview with me. Also, you can read about Yoko Tanaka, the terrific artist who drew all of those awesome illustrations in The Witch’s Guide to Cooking with Children, by visiting Yoko’s page here.
Sincerely,
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All illustrations on KeithBooks.com are reproduced from The Witch’s Guide to Cooking with Children Drawn by fine artist and children’s book illustrator Yoko Tanaka Copyright 2009 |