This week, a book delivery arrived for my creative writers. In case you don’t follow my blog regularly, I teach creative writing to secondary school students, running classes from September to April each academic year, with an end goal of publication in an anthology. I currently teach my creative writing classes as an enrichment course for sixth form (16-17 year olds) in a grammar school here in Northern Ireland where I live, and I previously taught creative writing to KS3 (12-13 year olds) and GCSE age pupils (15-16 year olds) on the gifted and talented registers at two schools in Battersea and Hammersmith in London, so all in all, I have been teaching creative writing classes for fifteen years.
Wow, now I feel old, lol.
When I was 17 years old, I would have loved the opportunity to have participated in a creative writing class with an end goal of publication. Apart from one poem that was published in a nationwide anthology, none of my fiction was published while I was a teen. Indeed, I wasn’t taught how to structure a short story while I was at school either, since GCSE and A level English focus on analysing literary methods in literature rather than the craft of writing.
Nevertheless, I began writing a children’s sci-fi adventure novel when I was 12, chipping away at the first draft in dribs and drabs throughout my teens. I eventually tried to get it published while I was a university student (studying archaeology and palaeoecology, not creative writing or even English). Back then, I knew little about point of view and characterisation. My plot wasn’t clearly outlined and the ending fell flat. I had two beta readers, who weren’t editors or even writers, and both praised the manuscript as they didn’t want to dent my fledgling confidence. One beta reader was my aunt and the other was a family friend, and both women only read contemporary romance books on occasion; never children’s sci-fi adventure stories.
After one full manuscript request and a handful of rejections, I considered signing up to an online writing course, but I was equal parts naive and cautious and worried about being scammed out of several hundred pounds, so I cancelled my application. Fast forward a few years, and while I was teaching English in Japan, and writing non-fiction travel articles which were published in the now defunct Nova City magazine in Japan, I began to self-study creative writing using primarily the Chicago manual of style, as well as critically analysing novels I was reading, jotting pencil notes in margins and on sticky notes. It was a longer learning curve than if I had attended a creative writing course, but my writing began to improve.
Once my teaching contract ended, I relocated to the UK with my then boyfriend, now hubby (who I met in Japan while we were both teaching English), and we lived in Cambridge, where I joined a writing group, and getting critical feedback on my stories helped to improve my writing skills even more. I began to get my poetry and short fiction accepted for publication in magazines and anthologies in the UK and elsewhere worldwide, and my career progressed from there.
For the past decade and a half, I have been fortunate enough to do something I’m passionate about for my day profession. My life has revolved around creative writing since I was a girl, and I love the opportunity to share this with the next generation of writers and helping them to become published authors too. I can’t wait to see their faces when they hold copies of their published anthologies and celebrate being published authors at 17, and living the dream I would have loved at that age too. 😀
Leilanie Stewart 