There are so many amazing resources available for kids and teens interested in writing. Whether they prefer poetry, nonfiction, fan fiction, short stories, comics or full-length novels, there are people and organisations out there glad to offer advice, encouragement, and recognition. This week’s Ten is the first of a planned three part series. Today will cover online resources. In July, we’ll highlight some great books for young writers, and in August we’ll turn our attention to stories about young writers. To start:
The Poetry Institute of Canada provides lots of tools for young writers, and hosts several poetry and creative writing contests every year.
The Young Writers Society offers a place for young writers to post their pieces, receive feedback on works in progress, and give feedback on others’ writing.
NaNoWriMo’s Young Writers Program takes the annual National Novel Writing Month challenge and shapes it for young authors. The program allows writers to declare their goal, draw on some great resources to help them along*, and interact with a community of others all striving for the same goal: to complete a novel in the month of November.
YoungWritersOnline.net is a collection of active forums focused on reading and writing. Visitors can ask questions, share off-site resources, and pose challenges.
Teenage Writers‘s main offering is another collection of forums. This one’s not so active, but some of the archives are pretty extensive. Find tips on writing poetry, prose, lyrics, scripts, and more.
Go Teen Writers is a blog maintained by four published authors passionate about mentoring young writers. The site is full of high quality material from people who’ve been there.
Teen Ink is an long-running organisation dedicated to getting teens’ writing into print. Writers 13-19 can submit work for publication.
Karleen Bradford is well known for her writing advice, as well as for her fiction. Although her book Write Now is hard to find, now, she has some great articles on the subject on her website.
10 Things Teenage Writers Should Know about Writing by John Scalzi presents some solid (if occasionally harsh) advice for young writers.
The Official Website of Spilling Ink the Book aims to promote a print book, but also provides a list of publishers who accept young writers’ work, tools for starting a writing club, a blog, and a great list of print and online resources.
*The coolest? Pep Talks from over four dozen published authors, including Scott Westerfield, Lois Lowry and John Green!
Be sure to check out our Outstanding Author Websites and On Author Blogs pages, too. Lots of authors, like Maureen Johnson, Kate Milford, and Jane Yolen, offer some great stuff for writers of any age.
The Lemon-Squash Book Club 