Advice for new writers

30 June 2008
Talent can be found gleaming in all corners of your life. I am very conscious of how lucky I am to be engaging so regularly with young people and discovering creativity they did not know they had.

But sometimes it appears unexpectedly. One of my recent ports of call has been the very wonderful Ebor Gardens Primary School in Leeds, where I have working with Year Five pupils to produce an anthology of folk and fairy tales. One lunch time at the school, a very smiley woman [who turned out to be the family liaison worker] approached me and asked if I would look at her poems. I took her collection home with me that evening, read and enjoyed her writing very much, and returned them the next day with some suggestions.

I am sure Annette won’t mind me using the notes I gave her in their entirety in this blog as I think they contain good advice for any writer beginning to take themselves seriously, and wanting to know where to go with their work.


Annette Logan: your poems

First of all I would like to say that it was a real privilege to read your poems, and that I was very moved by many of them.

You choose themes that we can all identify with, and you deal with them with real honesty, and lots of feeling. I can especially identify with the poems about children and parents, and love.

You are a very good writer with a terrific grasp of language and a real way with rhyme; this is something that not many folk can manage without sounding like greetings cards, but you do.

I was interested to see the order you have put your poems in, and the care you took to display them. You have obviously thought about the effect on your readers, and the impact you wish to have. You are thinking like a professional writer. Well done.

I also see that there aren’t any recent poems in this collection. I’m hoping that this is because you haven’t got round to tidying them up, or the final edit. You must keep writing.

Tips for the future:

Keep writing.

Watch out for publishing opportunities. There are a selection of magazines which offer advice and info. about writing. I’ve included one for you to look at in case you haven’t seen it before.

Read other poets. Buy yourself a couple of anthologies. See what other poets do, and how they do it.

Check out to see if there are any writing courses you can go on or writing groups you can join. Libraries are good sources of information here.

Keep writing. So important I said it twice.