EXCERPT from "Teaching Young Writers" by Diane Turnshek in Many Genres, One Craft: Lessons in Writing Popular Fiction:
I was never a young writer, but for ten years I have been teaching teens to write what they love. I feel that I am in a unique position to make observations about the differences between young writers and people who are merely new to the craft. Teaching them has taught me a lot. My experience shows me that young writers can turn out genre work equal in quality to that produced by battle-hardened, aged writers. Many of the young writers I have known, through inspiration and force of will, have learned what it takes to produce professional copy and have stuck with the challenging current publishing climate until their work sold.
Advantages to being a young writer abound.
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Diane Turnshek is an astronomer and a science fiction author with short fiction in Analog magazine and elsewhere. She teaches astronomy at the University of Pittsburgh, Carnegie Mellon University and St. Vincent College, where she’s also taught creative writing. Since 2002, Diane has been mentoring graduate students at Seton Hill University in the MFA in Writing Popular Fiction. She founded Alpha, the SF/F/H Workshop for Young Writers in 2002 and the Triangulation anthology series (as editor) in 2003. She served as Eastern Regional Director for SFWA, a professional organization of 1500 genre writers and directed the 2007 SFWA Nebula Awards in NYC. She has four delightful sons and a sweetly supportive dream guy.
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