I am currently conducting research for a proposal asssignment. My topic is creating a workshop or a similar program for youth aged 16-25. As many of us are in that age group, I would greatly value your opinions and ideas. As well, I would like to know if there are such programs in your community. If not, would you attend one if it were to be created? What is your opinion on high school creative writing classes? Do you feel that younger writers are not given the respect they deserve or are not taken seriously by the adult literary community?
Please, sit down before you fall down.
Belloq, "Raiders of the Lost Ark"
Do you feel that younger writers are not given the respect they deserve or are not taken seriously by the adult literary community?
Yes, especially this one: although I do believe that it's the lack of "maturity" and "naivity to the writing world" that cause older writers to not give proper respect to adolescents that write, which irritates the heck out of me.
There is a high school creative class I would like to participate, if it's at my school, called Spoken Word, which is a speaking poetry class. It influences people to be creative and as they speak, they sort of have a tune and rhythm for their words. Not many people can do this, I don't believe. I highly reccomend taking writing classes, if that's your passion.
I know I'm not generally 16, and I have no idea if this will be at all helpful, but don't look down upon me like, oh so, many have. Perhaps if the questions were more detailed I could be of more service?
I attended the Northern Virginia Writing Project's Young Writer's Program one day workshop last year. It was a very cool program. I went to sessions on Sci-fi/Fantasy and writing from personal experience. Other options included poetry, script writing, and college application essays.
I'm also currently sitting in my creative writing class at my high school. Most of the time, it's a joke of a class. But I love the teacher, and I get an easy 'A' for writing short stories. My teacher assigns two stories a quarter, a number of poems, and various in-class writing excercises. The stories are assigned with certain genres to make us write whatever we aren't so comfortable with. A few weeks ago we turned in a romance story, and before that sci-fi/fantasy. Yesterday we did an in-class excercise, writing letters as ourselves in the future telling our parents why we're dropping out of college, and then as our parents in reply. We also each are required to share one short story aloud a semester. The author brings in copies for everyone and reads it aloud. Then, the whole class does a critique, starting with what we liked and then looking at room for improvement.
I don't know that young writers really deserve respect from the adult literary community, but I feel that if someone is serious about their writing, it shouldn't matter what their age is. We all deserve equal opportunity and need critiques from each other, regardless of experience.
I've been at one informal writing session with adults- a write-in for NaNoWriMo. It was a lot more stiff than the teen workshop I went to, and everyone was much more focused on writing. A teen program, you'd definitely get a lot more socializing, which is good and bad. It would really depend on what kind of program you would want it to be.
It'd be better both for the adults and for the teens. The adults won't have to put up with teenagers who will, inherently, talk a lot. The teens won't have to put up with the adults who will baby the teenagers and not treat them with the same respect as they would to a fellow adult. I think an all teenager program would be really great because it allows for the teenagers to not feel as if they have to prove something.
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