Hey guys,
OK, so I've been banging on about this "project" of mine for weeks now, and finally it's ready to be unveiled, as it were.
Basically, I've been running
Read This for nearly a year now, and over the course of that year I have realised that there is a distinct lack of resources out there for young people who write creatively - particularly for young poets. Every singe week, we get emails to the magazine, with questions from young writers - things like "how do I make my poems better?" "Did I write my cover-letter OK?" "how do I write a bio?" "Can I publish under a pen name?" Lately I've been getting stressed out replying to these questions... I try to point these writers in the direction of online resources to help them, but there just don't seem to be very many.
Don't get me wrong - there are a LOT of resources on the internet for poets, but my experience of them is rarely positive. There are a lot of personal blogs (and some larger, collective ones too) which seem to exist solely for the purpose of bringing other poets, publishers and companies down. There is a massive prejudice against what is called "youth writing", particularly in poetry - just yesterday, I read a saddening blog from The Guardian which was basically taking the piss out of young people who read The Beats and then try to emulate them in their writing. I've also seen whole forum threads devoted to slagging off "bad teenage journal poetry" and discussions that seriously suggest you should not begin writing until you are at least 25, "because otherwise it's just embarrassing." Not surprisingly, a lot of the online journals and zines put up so many barriers that younger writers might well be put off submitting to them - indeed, some make it obvious that writers like this are downright unwelcome.
Basically, I've realised that young writers not only have nowhere to go with questions; they also face a barrage of criticism if they unwittingly stray into the wrong part of the blogosphere or into an unfriendly forum -- easily done, it's happened to me! I wanted to provide a source of basic, friendly, easy-to-understand information for younger writers, whilst also providing them with a place to chat, connect, contribute and gets their work featured. That place is
One Night Stanzas.
One Night Stanzas is made up of informative articles, useful resources and cool writing exercises, and although it takes the form of a blog, I would really like it to become more of a community. I want to give the writers who visit a chance to publish their work in a safe, criticism-free environment; I want to provide a question-and-answer service where no query is too small. As an ambitious but confused teen writer, I never had this, and I really think my writing suffered as a result of stupid decisions I made, just because I didn't know any better.
One Night Stanzas is not just for young writers. I reckon that the people it will really help the most are writers aged 12 - 20, but anyone under or over that age is of course welcome to read, participate, comment and contribute. I'll be on the lookout for guest-bloggers who want to write posts of their own -- I'll be calling out for people to talk about their own writing experiences and to provide their own work to feature on the blog's pages.
One Night Stanzas was created for you guys, and for people like you, so I really hope you'll go take a look, maybe bookmark me, leave some comments, and keep coming back. There'll be new stuff there everyday. Spread the word!
Claire, and the RT Team x
PS - Check out my news article
here and be sure to leave a +Fav.
The Read This Bookstore is now open!
Joy
