{"id":15080,"date":"2023-08-30T08:25:28","date_gmt":"2023-08-29T22:25:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/zenashapter.com\/blog\/?p=15080"},"modified":"2023-08-29T11:39:23","modified_gmt":"2023-08-29T01:39:23","slug":"the-value-of-the-teenage-mind","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/zenashapter.com\/blog\/the-value-of-the-teenage-mind\/","title":{"rendered":"The Value of the Teenage Mind! #MYAL"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Last week, I gave a talk at the 2023 Mosman Youth Awards in Literature about the value of the teenage mind. Thank you Mosman Library and Mosman Council for organising the awards night! As judge of the Senior Prose section, I wanted young writers to realise that their ideas, thoughts and feelings were good enough to form the basis of any story they wanted to write. They didn’t always have<\/em> to write about subjects suggested by teachers at school, or restrict themselves to what they thought they should<\/em> write about, especially when writing for readers in the real world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This year, the Senior Prose section received many wonderful stories of fabulous quality and variety, as always. Stories about worldwide affairs, contemporary societal issues, complex relationships, the past and the future. But the writers who stood out, and who therefore made it onto my shortlist, were those who put something extra into their stories. “Something of yourself,” I told them, “from yourself.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The romantic poet William Wordsworth once said: <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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“Fill your paper with the breathings of your heart.\u201d <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n

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Like most forms of creativity, good writing comes from both skill\u00a0and<\/em>\u00a0art, working together.<\/p>\n\n\n\n