Skip to main content

Great Websites for Teen Writers by Iva-Marie Palmer

It’s exciting when your bookworm teen announces his or her plans to be a writer. But teenagers can be a finicky lot: if the adults in their lives are too excited or too supportive of a new goal, suddenly that aspiration is gone. (And having a teen with the writer’s temperament means you’re likely dealing with a moody teenager squared.)
Rather than bombard them with fancy pens and motivational reading, direct them to a comfort zone: the Internet. These sites are great resources and landing spots for future storytellers. Suggest them to your teen writer (or maybe just leave this list lying around somewhere where it’ll be seen).

Figment — Specially tailored for the teen reader/writer, Figment is a community dedicated to reading and writing stories online. Addictively fun, users can rate stories by whether they made them laugh, blush, cry, or just say “wow.” The site frequently runs contests and features work from well-known authors and editors who sometimes drop in for Figment chats with the site’s community.

Teen Ink — Supported by the nonprofit Young Authors Foundation, Teen Ink is the twenty-five-year veteran in the fostering-teen-writers game. The magazine, book series, and website are devoted entirely to writing, art, and photos by teens. It’s also a go-to for teens interested in writing and publishing nonfiction essays and articles as well as poetry.

NaNoWriMo — Short for National Novel Writing Month, NaNoWriMo is an awesome thirty-day adventure for any writer, but teens might be especially inclined to join. In November, would-be novelists the world over attempt to write a 50,000-word (or more, if they can do it) book in thirty days. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Dealing with Grief

Below are some sites that can help you cope with the grieving process. Death and Grief Teen Grief Support Help for Teens Teens and Grief Support for Grieving Teens Grief Speaks: Death of a Friend
Post a Comment
Read more

CLASSIC YA BOOKS THAT MADE YOU FEEL SEEN

  K.W. Colyard   Jul 26, 2023 SPEAK   BY LAURIE HALSE ANDERSON I’m sure I’d heard of another book about rape before  Speak  came along. Hell, I might even have read one. But these days? This is the only book I can remember that dealt with one of the myriad possible reactions to sexual assault: silence.  Speak  and other books that deal with similar subject matter have the ability to empower victims of abuse to label what’s happened to them and seek help. ARE YOU THERE GOD? IT’S ME, MARGARET  BY JUDY BLUME Once a staple on banned books lists, Judy Blume’s most famous novel has been teaching preteens about puberty — including menstruation and boob exercises — since 1970.  Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret  was far ahead of its time, being one of the first children’s books to show an interfaith family on the page, and — along with Lois Lowry’s Anastasia Krupnik — depicted a child allowed to make up her own mind about which religion she wanted to follow. THE CAT ATE MY GYMSUIT  BY PAULA
Post a Comment
Read more

JEWISH YA BOOKS: MORE THAN THE HOLOCAUST

 by  Jaime Herndon   Oct 27, 2021 I can remember the first time I really felt “seen” in a book. It was Judy Blume’s  Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret . Margaret’s parents had an interfaith marriage, like my parents. I’d never seen that before in a book, and it felt special to me. I don’t remember reading many of the Holocaust books people say they read as kids (Lois Lowry’s  Number the Stars  comes to mind, which is actually about a non-Jewish girl), although we did read  The Diary of Anne Frank  in school. To put it bluntly, we didn’t need to read many of those books at my Jewish day school. The history was in many of our families, with grandparents having numbers on their arms or stories of escape. It was in some of our teachers whose histories we whispered. We studied the Holocaust intensely our 8th grade year. I don’t think it was until after I graduated and went to a public high school that I realized Holocaust kid lit and YA lit was A Thing. Sometimes I cringe when looking at
Post a Comment
Read more