Club your Friends

Our Daughter Emily is working on starting a writing club. So, on Wednesday, she and her sister sat with five friends in the back room of the local library and worked on stories.

They say that perfect practice makes perfect, which is true. If you continually practice something, but do it in a wrong manner, your actually reinforcing your mistakes, rather than improving your skills. When I read Emily and her friends stories, I find plenty of spelling, punctuation, grammer, syntax and thematic errors. I am tempted to think that they might just be making themselves worse.

Writing, however, is a bit different. The most important skill is creativity. The other things are merely tools to convey your creativity in a coherent manner. If someone continues to trigger their creativity, writing becomes more and more natural, regardless of the correctable errors in the tools.

Here is one of my favorites of hers so far:

Wednesday, July 30, 2008

To have a world of your own. . .

Is to use imagination.

Is to feel magic.

Is to have a place that is
Yours to keep.

To ride with dragons,

To dance with Faeries,

To sing with birds,

To hear the music and feel the kiss of
The Wind, Rain, Flower,
And Star.
A world of your own,
Is to make up new;
Foods,
Creatures,
Machines,
Games,

To laugh with the sea,
That is what having a world of your
Own is.

And here is her blog.