Creative Writing

Club sponsor Heathyr Shaw:

What is the purpose of the club?

I was approached by a few freshmen last year who wanted to start the club and the main purpose they wanted from it was was to just have outlet for people to critique their creative writing and to have opportunities to try different types of creative writing and to have someone to facilitate it. So, it won’t really be me facilitating most of it, it will be them. They want to also connect with the community so they want to do creative writings and then have someone, like me, help them find an outlet to let them read to kids or work on self-publishing and stuff like that.

Why did you decide to become a sponsor for the club?

[Sophomores Grace Johnson and Leilani Taylor] approached me, it wasn’t my idea, but they approached me and were really passionate about it and they pretty much knew exactly what they wanted to do. I personally love creative writing, I don’t think they knew that about me, but I thought it would be really cool. I wanted to get involved in something extracurricular, because I wasn’t prior to this, so it was just a great opportunity.

What events/activities will you don throughout the year?

We’ll meet every other week, and we’ll do a different kind of creative writing [each time], like maybe a workshop or working on a different genre. They’re wanting to do some things where they write children’s books and go read at Children’s Mercy or Ernie Miller’s Nature Park, so I’m hoping we can arrange one or both of those. We’re also hoping to collaborate with the LitMag and submit some things to that.

What are you excited about for the club?

I’m just excited to work with kids that particularly love creative writing. I teach English classes, but I haven’t had the opportunity to teach creative writing yet. It’s definitely an interest of mine though, so I’m really excited to have a bunch of kids in one room who all share that interest and to be able to connect with them through that.

What challenges might you face?

Well, we decided to meet during seminar because that’s what works best for some of the club leaders, so I think a challenge might be just running out of time because I think these kinds of meetings could last a couple of hours if you wanted them to. Hopefully, it just doesn’t conflict with other things. I think we’re meeting at a time that doesn’t conflict with a lot of other things, so that’s good. Another challenge might be that they’ll most likely have to do some work outside of being at the club to be able to bring it back to have it critiqued and such, so hopefully finding that time outside of school isn’t an issue for people.  

Sophomore club member Grace Johnson:

Why did you want to start the club?

I really like writing, and my mom is a teacher at Sumner Academy, so she tells me about all the cool different writing clubs that they have there. I noticed that we didn’t have [any], so I thought it would be a good opportunity to help get more students at our school to get into writing creatively. It’s also a good way to express emotion.

What do you think the club will add to Mill Valley?

If anyone is going through something, they can write it down or [turn it into] a story or something like that. We also plan to do little activities throughout the year.

What do you hope to accomplish through the club?

I hope to accomplish getting more students to interact with each other and if a student wants to write professionally, they could get criticism from their fellow peers who are at the same level as them.

What are you excited about for the club?

Everything. For me, personally, I’m excited to get feedback on my writing that’s not just from my friends or family. They’ll be more truthful, I guess, like people you’re related to or close friends they tend to soften it or make it more brutal. So, [if critiques were] coming from someone you don’t know it would be a good mixture.

What challenges might you face?

We may have a problem with [receiving] money. We might do an activity where we write little children’s story books, it’s kind of in the works, but we’d give them to Children’s Mercy or Ernie Miller but we’d need paper and ink to be able to make them.