Jessica; What do you remember from your days at The School for Young Writers and/ or being published in Write On magazine?
Charlotte: I started when I was 9, because some Write On magazines were distributed at my school and I was told about the School for Young Writers for the first time. I remember I thought it was so cool and grown up, although I was terrible at actually finishing anything at first. I’ve got a lot of old notebooks with the first few sentences of stories that I never went back to.
My first time being published in Write On was a page that my whole class contributed to. We all wrote a description for a made up animal (which is a little funny, because I then went on to study biology at university). I was most proud a few years later when I won one of the short story competitions Write On runs for a story about the moon landing. I had come up with the whole idea myself (and then actually managed to finish it) and I couldn’t believe people really liked it! It felt so surreal.
Jessica: Did you continue writing after your Write On days, or did you stop and start again? Please talk about any challenges you faced in writing at this time.
Charlotte; I’ve kept writing! I’m in my last year of university now, so I don’t have a lot of free time which makes it hard. Most of my writing lately is for research proposals and essays but I’m excited to get back into poetry and prose once I graduate. I’ve really just tried to keep writing as a habit. The great thing about the School for Young Writers was that I was forced to sit down for two hours every week and write, no matter what. I’ve found that writing is not at all like riding a bike – if I take a long break it’s so much harder to do.
Jessica: Which early experiences/opportunities/classes have influenced your writing the most?
Charlotte; I went to a ton of different workshops when I was in high school, which I would highly recommend doing. The more I went to, and the more people I shared my writing with the less embarrassing I found it. Showing someone a draft felt like such an insurmountable barrier at first, but the more times I did it the more permeable that barrier became, until one day I stopped worrying about it at all. Losing that embarrassment really changed how I write. It was second nature to censor myself, and agonise over every word, and only write something down if it was perfectly fully formed. Being able to let loose made me so much more creative and willing to experiment with different forms and styles. Plus it’s a lot more fun!
Jessica: How has your writing evolved over the years?
Charlotte; When I first started writing I HATED poetry. I didn’t get it at all. To be fair, I hadn’t read very much of it yet, but I was an extremely harsh judge and swore I would never write any. Of course, I changed my mind. When I was 10 or 11 I showed my tutor at School for Young Writers a (shockingly) finished version of a story I had written, and I remember her being surprised because when I showed her the first draft, she had assumed it was a poem. That flipped a switch for me – realising I had been writing poetry all along, and hadn’t even realised. Everything snowballed from there.
Jessica: What is your favorite genre to write in now?
Charlotte: I love writing things that are a little bit creepy and I love to write things that make me laugh. A lot of the time the two go hand in hand - whenever I read something I find exciting or shocking it always gets a little laugh out of me. I love being surprised by an idea or turn of phrase and I think it just makes me so happy I can’t help it. The vast majority of my writing is only ever going to be read by me, so my main goal is to please myself. I’m the only person who has to read every iteration of a piece, so I’d better keep myself entertained!
Jessica: Where is the place where you often enjoy writing?
Charlotte: Most of my serious writing gets done at my desk in my room, because I like to write late in the evening or very early in the morning while I’m drinking coffee. I’m incredibly lazy in the afternoon so I never bother to try and write then. But I also keep a pen by my bedside table for when I wake up at night and think of a phrase or an idea, so I can write it down on my arm. It’s a habit I picked up when I was a kid, and writing it down on a notebook or my phone just doesn’t work the same (although it would probably make more sense).
Jessica: Thanks so much, Charlotte.
