To the OP: My kiddo loves to write. When she was in 6th grade & 7th grade - I sent her to Girl Summer at Emma Willard for their writers workshop. It was a great 2 week course - they did a variety of writing projects and trips (restaurant reviews, a Broadway play review, travel writing piece after touring Boston, adventure log from a zip line excursion). They read their poetry and short stories at a coffee house and visited a publishing house. The girls also published a book. I PRAY that this program will resume next year. It was an amazing experience!!!
@JaneLittleH: So, if this daughter is in 7th grade, she is not the one admitted to Exeter which you are considering turning down because you are unimpressed by the headmaster and because you “want the kid to be close to home” as posted on your other thread. Why are you considering boarding school for this younger child then?
All of the boarding schools discussed in this forum will give your daughter a great all-round high school education, including extensive experience in the fundamentals of good writing, but they are not in the business of turning out novelists or any other specialty; there are no “majors” in boarding schools. Some BS are stronger in certain areas than others, and some are solely arts focused as noted above but, if you are questioning the value of Exeter, I’m not sure any suggestions for BS with good writing programs will satisfy you.
I completely agree with @Dustyfeathers #7 and would re-read that post several times and evaluate high school and college programs based on the strength of the broader education they provide. There is plenty of time for this young child to develop into a writer if that is what she is meant to be or to follow other pursuits as she discovers them. If she is a writer, she will write; there is no escaping that calling.
Anecdote: Our son was hell-bent on film school for college and chose his boarding school based on the ability to expand this interest and pursue a film career. Before entering BS at 14, he had twice taken first place in a film category at a major university’s annual digital film competition. He ended up graduating from a service academy with a degree in electrical engineering. Kids change a lot during their high school years. Now is not the time to pigeon-hole them.
That was my daughter at that age. When she was in 5th or 6th grade she was writing fan fiction novels and posting them various places and getting lots of reads. Also winning various creative writing awards.
Fast forward. She’s now a HS junior and has been college shopping in advance of applying to college in the fall. In the intervening 4-5 years she has gone through a writing phase, a digital arts and animation phase (was creating her own animated shorts) and is now thinking of studying both molecular biology and digital arts/animation in college. She also plays 3 instruments. She is looking at a variety of liberal arts colleges and still interested in writing, but wants a well-rounded education and wants to dabble and experiment with a lot of things.
Don’t be in a rush to narrow her down at age 13. Most good liberal arts schools have good writing programs. Writing is at the core of a good liberal arts education. I’d be looking for schools that give her a good well-rounded liberal arts education as well as room to write.
Many of us here have older kids, well past college, who showed various and sometimes intense interests and talents in middle school, and have also watched other kids as they developed.
Kids above all need the freedom and autonomy to determine their own way. Sometimes we supportive parents encourage them to narrow too early, and sometimes rigorous schools get in the way with the intense workload. These are issues that each family has to deal with.
Talent can pose problems, in other words. I honestly tried to never use the word!
The prodigy pianist who is told to practice and whose parents glow with pride early on, may end up avoiding music altogether! That said, I have talked with musicians who say that without parental pressure, they never would have kept with their instrument in middle school.
We can only caution you not to get too invested in your daughter “the writer.” Keep it relaxed. She doesn’t need to publish other than for her own personal pleasure and maybe her friends. By all means she could benefit from a writing program geared to her age, for social reasons as well- but that can also wait.
I really liked the post about the dangers of early success. Your daughter has a lifetime. She needs to evolve and if writing is something she enjoys, great. But she doesn’t need to be “successful” yet. And she may develop other interests over the next decade.
Good luck!
I’m a book editor and at one time I was the in-house editor for both the O’Henry Short Story Awards and the Pushcart Prizes at Doubleday and Simon & Schuster. A boarding school education is perfect for writers because the amount and rigor of critical reading and writing is on a whole different level than most public schools. Fiction writers do not need to major in any specific subject - any liberal arts major will do. Less than 10% of writers make their living off writing so it helps to develop expertise in a subject that you can also write about or get an MFA if you are going to teach. In high school write every day and read as much as possible. You need good sentences in your ears. Writing is a craft and you need to be disciplined and put in the hours. Finding a community can be very helpful- there are wonderful precollege writing programs for high schoolers. Working on the high school literary magazine or creating a writing workshop with your friends can be fun. Its important not to be too critical of your writing at this age - they get that in class. Write for fun and don’t worry about coaches or the end product at this stage. Good writers rarely end up where they intended and it is very important to be open to that part of the process. Turning this into a job or career before college is not necessary or helpful to her development of her voice. She needs the space to try on many different hats now.
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