Teen Writing Contest

Encouraging your teenager to enter a creative writing contest is a great way to get him or her to develop literary talent. From teenage love poems to essays to fiction, a large proportion of teenagers enjoy writing, but many of them are shy about sharing it. That is what is so great about teen writing contests: they are more or less anonymous. When your kid enters a teen writing contest, his work is judged by people who will never meet him and usually don't even know his name. If he doesn't win, no one knows that he lost. If he does win, however, he can get recognition from his friends and family that will really boost his self-esteem.

There are many different teen writing contests. There are, of course, the national ones like the scholastic writing award. That is a contest that pretty much every teenager who is serious about creative writing should enter. Perhaps more important than entering the national contests, however, teens need to have a local writing contests. Not only is an area teen writing contest easier to win, but it promises a teenager recognition from the local community.

In the area I live in, there weren't any teen writing contests until a few years ago. Me and some friends actually decided to start our own. We had teenage students who were interested in creative writing, and we thought that a teen writing contest would motivate them to do their best. Rather than judging the contest ourselves which wouldn't have been fair, we appointed a board of judges from the community. Every story, poem, and essay had the name of the writer removed from it so that it could be judged anonymously alongside every other one.

I was so proud when we finally had the teen writing contest. I was proud for two reasons. The most obvious one was that I was happy that we had pulled it off. It is no small feat to get community sponsorship and support for a teen writing competition. More important, however, was the fact that my son got second place in the teen story competition. I wasn't supposed to know, but apparently it was extremely close. The other story only won by one point, so if you look at it right he almost got first place. I couldn't have been more proud.

Since that day, his feelings about writing have changed. He takes his own work a lot more seriously, and wants to grow up to be an author. As you might guess, I encouraged him every chance I get. I am in every way the proud parents, wanting the best for my kid. I just hope he thanks me when he finally gets an award for his first novel.