Why Young Writers Are More Fun To Work With Than Adults
It’s all about the attitude
For some people, working with children might be their worst nightmare. Isn’t that how the old saying goes? Never work with children or animals. Well, I’ve worked with both in my life; starting as a childminder, going on to become a dogwalker, then going back to children with my community interest company, Chasing Driftwood Writing Group.
When I started my company back in 2015 I set it up with one main aim. I wanted to run an adult writing group as I could not find one to attend in the evenings. There were plenty locally but they all took place in the daytime when I was busy with four young children. So, I set my own up and ran it quite successfully for a number of years in a local community hall.
I was a dog-walker at the time but itching for a new challenge. Then I had a brainwave. What about writing workshops for kids? I could combine my old experiences working with children with the skills I’d picked up since I’d become an author. I did some research, contacted people doing similar things only to discover no one really was doing similar things…at least not for kids.
Not long after I started the adult group, I began putting on creative writing workshops for kids in the school holidays. And as soon as my youngest child started school, I branched into after school writing clubs, something that also didn’t exist for children in my area.
By 2017 I’d registered as a community interest company and since then my little business has grown and grown. I now run eight writing clubs for children, catering for home-educated children via zoom and school children after school. Sadly, the adult writing club didn’t survive the move to zoom during covid, and since then, although I get regular requests to restart it or put on workshops for adults again, I remain reluctant.
Don’t get me wrong, kids are exhausting! I generally come out pretty shattered and there is way more admin and paperwork than I’m happy with, but it’s always worth it. I love my job.
And when it comes to writing advice, writing prompts, tips and challenges, offering feedback and encouragement, it’s kids I prefer working with and here is why.
Kids are overwhelmingly positive about writing while adults are often incredibly negative.
Children sometimes need a confidence boost when it comes to writing but they’ll also happily declare that they’re going to write a story and publish it. Just like that. They believe in themselves in a way that adults often don’t. During my clubs, I’ll often be told by energetic young voices that they are going to get published, they are going to write an entire series, or they’re going to get their story on Netflix. And in that moment, they utterly and truly believe it.
I never discourage them, not ever.
I would love them to hold onto that energy and self believe forever because adults are usually the very opposite.
I lost count of the amount of times adults came to my group and said they hadn’t written anything again. Same story the next week, and the next, yet their heads were full of stories they had been keeping in there for years. Even now I get regular messages from adult writers who still haven’t finished their first draft years after starting it, and I generally find there is far too much negativity coming from the adult world of writing. I’m happier escaping into the more positive world of young writers.
Too many adults like to talk about writing. Too many adults like to moan about writing as if it is some kind of torture inflicted upon them. Too many adults have too many excuses. They’re tired, they’re too busy, they’ve got writers block, the list goes on.
I’ve got to admit I got tired of trying to counteract the negativity.
When I realised I made more money from the kids clubs, there was really little incentive to keep the adult group going or run more adult workshops. That’s not to say I never will, but at the moment the kids clubs absorb all my time and energy and I get back more from them.
They’re excited, they’re brimming over with ideas, they’re enthusiastic and open minded about trying new things. They’ve got things they want to say. Do they start more stories than they finish? Yes, often. Do they generally dislike the whole planning and plotting process? Yes some of them but I always convince them in the end! Are they noisy, silly, endlessly chatty and sometimes a bit naughty? Of course. And they bring me such joy I’d never change a thing.
And I feel so privileged that my job involves making sure they don’t end up too tired, too busy or too disillusioned by the world to ever give up on their writing.
