A Small Thought About Writing

I learned something about writing from my 12-year-old friend C this weekend. Her mother showed me a short story that C had written, about a page and a half long. I found the whole story well-written, but what especially struck me was that four or five sentences were purely C. I could hear her saying the words. Meaning that at 12, she's already found her voice, or at least glimpses of it.

I thought: that's what you have to do when you write, isn't it? You have to put a piece of yourself there on the page. I'm not talking about writing about one's own experiences (though clearly there are places for that, too), but about writing in the voice that is uniquely your own. We've talked about this in the Kidlitosphere before, about how we can recognize the words of the bloggers that we follow closely by the words themselves, even before seeing a name attached to them. I guess I've just never noticed this before with someone I know from the real world. It's really neat.

© 2009 by Jennifer Robinson of Jen Robinson's Book Page. All rights reserved.