Readersand Writers festival workshop
On Wednesday 12th May 16 year 9 to 12 students attended the Auckland Writers and Readers Festival at the Aotea Centre. Eight went to the two morning sessions and eight to the afternoon ones.
In the morning we heard the performance poet, Charlie Dark, talk about how he began to write poetry and how poetry changed his life. Charlie Dark is from London. As a boy he was bullied and a teacher gave him a pen and a notebook to record his feelings. From this he has become a professional poet and teacher of poetry writing. One of his jobs is Poet-in-Residence at Arsenal Football Club. Charlie had the 800 plus students from all over Auckland spellbound by his wit and carried along by his dancing skills. He even had them joining in!
William Taylor spoke of his life journey and the path that led him to becoming a writer for young adults. He read extracts from some of his books, including his new memoir.
In the afternoon we first listened to Anna MacKenzie. She, also, spent many years trying other paths before she realized that there was no escape from her destiny as a writer. She took parts of her own life and her experiences to use in her stories. She likes writing fantasies as ‘there no rules’. Anna told how she keeps a list of possible plot ideas and suddenly the time is right to use one for a novel. Sometimes a story gets quite a long way before it becomes ‘stuck’ and then she deletes, once 7,000 words, and carries on from where it last worked. Often she has no idea of where a story will go when she begins. The characters develop a personality and become real people. Her presentation was very interesting and inspiring.
D es Hunt was the last speaker. He had started his working life as a science teacher, then moved on to writing science textbooks. Then he found a stuffed giant New Zealand gecko in a French museum and learned that New Zealand was once home to this now extinct animal. Soon after, some foreigners were arrested for attempting to smuggle living geckos out of the country. The combination of these two events gave him the idea to right an adventure story for young adults. This story was rejected by 7 publishers and Des almost gave up. Then he realized that what the story lacked was tension so he rewrote it and it was a success. He then showed us some physics and chemistry experiments and how they related to tension building in a story. His presentation was full of humour and information.These are the feedback words given by the students-
Recommended motivating inspiring enthusiastic surprising funny entertaining educational outstanding interesting great experience cool
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