Since early in 2020, I have been running Virtual Writers Groups for young writers. Each session includes a writing prompt that I set for the participants… and I do the prompt too.
Earlier in the year, I took this photo:
These are the notebooks that I had been using for the stories for the writers group sessions. They contain stories that I’ve been writing over the last 20 or so months.
On Friday, I used the last pages in the red notebook.
That is four full notebooks of silly stories, and the rest aren’t fully yet. That’s a lot of stories, but that’s not surprising given I have had anywhere from two to six sessions in a week!
It’s been so much fun writing these stories. There are some that are totally ridiculous, and these were fun to write, but will never see the light of day. There are some that I have already been editing to be a picture book or chapter book one day. There are one or two I have set aside to work on during the Chapter Book Challenge next year. There are a few that have the potential to be novels for grown ups!
I have no idea when these silly stories I wrote during writers group will become something that it ready to be published, if it ever happens. The goal with these stories was just to keep writing and having fun with the process.
For me, much of writing is about just writing. It’s about the process, coming up with ideas and seeing where they go. It’s nice to write without thinking ‘this needs to be published’. I also love sharing my stories with the kids in writers group for their reactions, and seeing how they interpret the prompts. Often their ideas are so much better than mine… even then, that’s not the point. We are all just having fun with writing and exploring our imaginations.
So, another notebook full! Another notebook dusted off, ready to fill with more stories. I can’t wait to fill this one too.
In case you’re wondering, these are all notebooks that used to be ones that my kids used for school. We tore out the pages they had used, so I can use the rest of the pages – the ultimate recycling.
