Young Writers Society

When has your writing suddenly changed- for better or for worse?

What do you think happened to influence that?

If you read my stuff from like a year ago...*blech* It was absolutely horrible. Now I've gotten to a point where I actually like it, and I think if you actually read a poem that I wrote in 5th grade, you would agree that it's a heck of a lot better now.

My Brother Sam Is Dead. That book exposed me to a lot more of human nature- true hurt, pain, morbidity...

I was a horrible writer before I started actually planning out my stories. Now I learn as I go on, and I'm never afraid to ask for the harshest criticisms. Unfortunately, I think my last history class influenced me to add more war scenes lol. I hated that class, but boy did I get interested in war tactics.. *laughs*

Now my writing has pretty much stopped, and I know it's because of... certain situations which I do not care to name here. I'm trying to start up again, even planning on rewriting what I have. I think that when you really start to hate your book so much that you don't feel like writing it and it just becomes a chore, something's wrong and you need to pinpoint the problem. For me, the problem was too many unnecessary characters. So, I rewrite.

Well ... turning points, let's see.

Probably when in year 8 we had to do journals which we could write whatever we liked in, and i thought "I want to write a story". I already knew I liked writing, but that would be the first time I really, seriously got into it. Also, when I sat down on the computer chair last year, opened up Google, typed "writing stories" and hit search. That was a big step (because I really mistrust computers, they seem to hate me, and I have no idea how to work them properly) which I wouldn't have taken unless my year 8 English teacher (who was very encouraging and loved my ideas) went away because her mother was sick. I had no mentor, and my newly found vigour for writing was draining away so I thought "right" ... and here I am.

Funny you should ask about turning points, because I hit a few today. (not for writing though)

I've always sort of made up new characters and put them into existing books and played them over in my head and added new stuff when I got bored. Last year, I felt that I should start writing one down and I did.

Another major turning point was when I saw a poster in my school advertising a writing contest. It had a website but I didn't catch it, so I tried searching "writing contests" and found Writing.com. Then I found Nate's post in a forum there advertising The Young Writer's Society, and I decided to check it out. I think you know what happened from there.

Around the same time was when I stopped trying to write stories and became more of a poet. It was 2 am, I couldn't sleep, and I came up with a good idea for a poem, so I wrote it down. I immediately wanted to post it on Writing.com. I went downstairs and ended up staying online until 4:30 and sleeping in until 3:15 PM on a Sunday. Which isn't really a good thing. This is when I realized I was really good at poetry and I should pursue it more.

Turning point: joining YWS. It's true - I was searching for a decent writing site to help me, and I think my writing has drastically improved since November when I joined. I can just about do poetry, my writing is stronger as a result and I can always rely on help here. It's a great feeling.

Umm...other than that, I guess it was pursuing poetry rather than prose as an expression of myself. Last summer I considered poetry rubbish, but my attitude has changed dramatically over a year and I now love writing poetry despite how good or bad I am at it.

*smiles sadly* I'll be honest here. I thought I'd mention this because everyone was saying how much this place improved their poetry, and it deffinatly was a turning point ... thought not one for the better.

I never liked poetry much, then I joined a place called YFW (young fantasy writers) and met someone called Mesh. She liked poetry, and encouraged me to try it, and when I did I thought "Hey, this is kind of fun!". I never really thought I was any good though. When I came here, I posted some poetry. Some got reasonable reviews, but the genral feeling for critiquing felt as though the critiquers were pihranas fighting over a scrap of meat. If people didn't like it, or if it genuinly was bad, people would speak like "Honestly! This is wrong! Why can't you see it's wrong?". I'd never really done much poetry, and was learning as I was going and no one was telling me how what I was doing was wrong, or how to fix it, they were just telling me it was wrong. That was I while ago, I don't know if people are still like that, because I tend to avoid the poetry forums now, but that's how it was.
I still write poetry, but it stays in my writing note book and I don't show it to anybody, not even Mesh.

On a happier note, this site has helped my writing a lot, even though I haven't actually posted any pieces of my work for ages ... it's the critiquing that does it. So I encourage anyone to have a go at critiquing, and say more than "Yeah! It's great!" because it will help you just as much as it helps them.

I started my turn around at TYWC and it is still going on today. Though I am much much much better.

I read some of my earliest work, from when i was about 11 the other day and it was cringeworthly, it really was, the idea was sound but the writing was awful - I know my writing started to get better when i started reading more fantasy, my only fantasy reads up until that point was the Chronicals of Narnia and The Lord of the Rings, but when i started to read out more, i got better ideas and i learned how to write. TYWC did not help much because none of my work got posted, so it has to be YWS, i never had the confidence to show anyone my writing but when i did, on here, the critics i got where useful and i know im going up to the next stage, where i'm ready to have others give their opinion on my writing. It started with more reading, and its still carrying on here.

My turning point was joining yws which got me writing. But also it was when my parents got divorced and also what happended with marching band. Which got me really depressed and I started writng poems to help get my feelings out.

I don't think you can pin down my development as a story-teller to one point in time, or a single action. Everything you encounter is just another drop in the bucket. Few events stand out as being much more significant than the other. However, while I loved writing for as long as I can remember, I didn't really start enjoying reading until I was fourteen and my father insisted that he buy me a book. So I chose the novelization of the X-Men movie, since I had seen it recently. Not a particularly fantasticly written book, but it's got a decent narrative and an engaging, relatable story. Managed to read it in a day. Within the next year I managed to write my first novel.

When I was in grade eight, I was always very frustrated with my teacher. We wrote a lot of stories in his class, but they all had to be squeezed into two pages of a very small notebook, double-spaced. At the time, my own stories were rarely shorter than five pages, single space, on much larger paper. I mean, what kind of time-travel story can you write in less than five hundred words? But being forced to use that restriction made me learn a lot about what not to do when it comes to structuring a story, and the importance of a proper introduction and resolution.

Two years ago, a big influence was when I got to meet Robert Sawyer, who was Writer-in-Residence at my library. During his residency, he did manuscript critiques, so I sent him in something of mine. This award-winning, big-time sci-fi writing, said so many great things to me, and was so encouraging. Even though I was nervous going in, he made me feel comfortable, and gave me a confidence boost that I really needed.

Yeah, TYWC helped me a lot, with criticism and reading other people's work. I think reading other poets and getting to know their style helps a LOT. I'd say my turning point was when I was 14, when I didn't write what I'd seen before, but started to be creative and original. I think that stemmed from a few experiences that I went through then. You can always complain about what's happened to you, but if there's one thing I've learned from bad experiences it's that something good comes out of it. For me it's writing.