Young Writers Conference, Then and Now
On Tuesday I presented three sessions of Making Old Stories New Again: Retold Fairy Tales at the Young Writers Conference in Southwest Minnesota, where I grew up. More than 30 years ago, I attended the conference when it was just getting off the ground. I don't remember the specifics of the sessions I took, except that one of them inspired me to write a play for three (me, my best friend, my sister) that we never got around to performing, and a picture book that won me a purple ribbon and a trip to the State Fair through 4H. Another session impressed upon me the importance of writing every day, an idea that, while undergoing some adjustment, did instill in me the habit of establishing a writing practice and not just waiting for inspiration to strike. Inspiration: that's what I remember most vividly from the Young Writers Conference. It was nourishment for my burgeoning writer's soul.
This week was my fifth (or maybe sixth?) time presenting at the conference. I have done sessions on worldbuilding, journal writing, fairy tale retellings, and NaNoWriMo. In every group of kids, there are a bunch who are probably there to get out of school. There are some who are outgoing and would probably engage with teachers regardless of the topic. And then there are those who enter the room with their eyes alight and their special writing notebooks clutched to their chests, the ones that remind me so much of myself. They also remind me why doing these events is important. Back-to-back public speaking is not my favorite thing (I'm a writer, an introvert, for goodness sake!), and I know that markets are flooded with writing. In moments of pessimism, I find myself asking, "Does this work really matter? Does the world really NEED more writers?"
I realized Tuesday that I was asking the wrong question. I don't really need to worry about whether the world needs more writers, but rather whether KIDS need writing. And that is something I do feel certain about.
Whether these kids become bestselling authors or not is really not the point. I was one of those young writers with my eyes lit up with excitement at every session, the desire within to be seen as a "real" writer by others. I've attained only modest success as a writer, but I now realize the purpose of those adolescent dreams wasn't necessarily to propel me into fame and fortune. It was to help me survive. It was to give me a way to express myself in a world where I felt out-of-step with the culture, constantly. It gave me solace and a sense that what I had to say mattered. By the time I was sixteen, I recognized that my depression worsened if I wasn't writing. And that got me out of bed, got me through high school, got me into the rest of life, where things did, blessedly, get better. Because my circumstances changed and I had more control over my life, but also because I had a tool at my disposal that could help me work through literally ANYTHING that life threw my way. And in so doing, it also connected me to community during some incredibly isolating periods (my first time living alone far from where I grew up, the early years of motherhood).
In the big scheme of things, fairy tale retellings may not change the world. But if they make middle-school or high-school or any other part of life more bearable, if they make it easier for someone to hold on because they want to continue living in their mind even if they don't want to continue living in the world, then those hours with third-to-eighth graders on a college campus were well spent.
Just for funsies, if you're into retellings, below is the list of writing prompts and resources I handed out at the conference.
