Guiding your young authors through the creative writing process – Emerging writers

Young authors all over the greater Paris area are sharpening their pencils and collecting story nuggets in their writing journals in preparation for the 2014 Young Authors Fiction Festival (YAFF), co-sponsored by Time Traveler Tours and the American Library in Paris. 

The deadline for YAFF submissions is April 1st (no fooling!). 

Sarah Towle, co-director of the Young Authors Fiction Festival, has written another blog post to help parents guide their young authors through the creative writing process. This post is dedicated to emerging writers. The term “emerging readers” refers to those kids who have “cracked the code” of literacy. That is to say, they’ve discovered that written words are symbols for spoken equivalents and that, strung together, words make sentences and sentences communicate meaning.  

According to Sarah, the first priority for helping emerging writers is making meaning. What’s of primary importance at this stage is that your young authors are keen to experiment and make meaning with language. That they are expressing their ideas, even if their spellings are largely invented, which is alright.

So what to do when you can’t make sense of their finished stories precisely because of all that invented spelling? Ask them to read their story to you. Your young authors will know what their writing means. And as you listen, read along.

See Sarah’s full post on her website at www.sarahtowle.com. And stay tuned next week for another post for developing writers and readers.