Thoughts from a Teen Writer

I may have mentioned before that one afternoon a week, I mentor a seventeen-year-old girl who wants to be a writer. We do this through a program at her school called PRO. I'm fairly sure that I learn as much or more from Allison as she does from me! So I thought it might be fun and informative for her to post from time to time about writing from a teen's perspective -- what she's learning from our time together, through her own practice of the craft, and any other thing she wants to talk about. She might want to discuss a book she's reading and her thoughts about it -- writers are readers, afterall, or should be. I learn so much from reading the work of other authors!

Allison will post on Mondays from time-to-time, and as this is Monday, she's starting today! Her first post will be more of an introduction to get things started. So without further ado, I give you my writing mentee/intern Allison!

Hello, everyone! Interning with Jennifer has been extremely beneficial to me. I’ve learned a whole lot about writing that I didn’t even think about before. It also helps that our meetings are so laid back because to me, writing should be something enjoyable and not reluctant like a school assignment.

Recently, I learned from Jennifer how to format my dialogue in my story and I also learned about free-writing, which is how I got my idea in the first place. (For more about "freewriting" see this post).

I know that writing isn’t as glamorous as people make it out to be, but to me, it isn’t bad at all. Yeah, I don’t know about the struggles with selling a book and whatnot, but the actual art of writing is as glamorous as what I thought it would be. :-)

Allison