While participating in workshops, panel
discussions, book signings and Christmas craft fairs this year, I’ve noticed
something really quite wonderful. Teenagers and young adults are writing! In
August, I was selling my books at a farmer’s market that was celebrating
literacy that day. Across from my table, a nineteen-year-old woman had written
and beautifully illustrated two fantasy novels for teens. She loved writing and
hoped to continue to do so for some time to come. She was working over the
summer to pay for university which she would start in the fall.
This month, I signed a book for a customer
whose teenaged daughter loved reading and writing. A recent social event, I met our host’s seventeen-year-old daughter who is writing a
fantasy series with her mother. How cool is that? When I mentioned that it was great
to hear that she was more interested in reading and writing than video games,
she told me that her friends also wrote. Given all we
hear in the media about distracted kids with their eyes glued to an endless
supply of games and movies, this was an eye opener. Another friend has a
twenty-two-year-old son in university who’s been writing screenplays and working
on movie productions since high school.
Recently, I was at a Christmas craft fair
and approached by a woman who’s part of a group who mentors teenage writers. She asked me if I might consider speaking to the
group. While packing up at the end of the day, a girl who looked about twelve
or thirteen came up to me and said that she was working on two fantasy novels
right now. We talked about the importance of reading, and she thought it was
cool I was an author. Yeah, it is. Sometimes I forget that. But it’s even
cooler to know that the next generation is reading and writing. Not one of
those young people mentioned anything about income or making it big financially.
At this stage of their lives it was all about learning and the joy of creating
something on the page. They deserve all the support and encouragement we can
give them.
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