A Brave Writer's Life in Brief

Over the next few weeks our summer interns will share their writing experiences with us. Finlay went first. Today we hear from Charlotte:

Passion for Writing
by Charlotte Meert

I started really writing in 1st grade. I wasn’t homeschooled yet, but my mom read us stories every night. From the moment I could understand what a story was, I wanted to write.

My teacher at the time had a certain policy. We were to write one to two pages of anything we wanted, every day in class. We weren’t allowed to go home until we had something we could show her. I guess the habit stuck. I still write mainly by hand in notebooks, and what I love I type into the computer.

After 4th grade and some nasty school experiences, my mom kept me home. I flourished, and wrote more and more, even dabbling in poetry a little. I discovered a passion for fiction and for creating characters out of whatever inspiration I could find. The beauty of it was that with homeschooling, I had as much time as I wanted.

My junior year of high school, I went back to a brick and mortar. It was unpleasant, to put it lightly. The classes were so far behind where I had been at home, I was incredibly bored. So I wrote. I could never finish anything, but it was comforting to disappear inside my notebook pages and forget that all my friends were homeschooled, and not in the building with me.

The English teacher was the only one who noticed. She issued me a challenge. If I could finish a story by the end of the year, I would get an automatic A. She’d help me edit, and then find a publisher, but I had to be done within the nine month period. If I didn’t finish, I’d fail the class. I worked my butt off. I wrote every day–ten, twenty pages, sometimes more. I did little else at school, and relaxed at home. My lunch breaks were writing breaks, my free period, same, my study hall, same. It’s really quite useful to write by hand, as teachers seemed to think I was working on assignments for their classes. And it worked! I wrote a 250 page novel on Russian spies in less than nine months. True to her word, my teacher helped me edit.

Then, quite suddenly, she disappeared. Her email stopped working, and her phone. No one seems to know where she went. I was accepted by a publisher within six months of having finished editing with a professional’s help. I was never able to find that teacher again. I asked the school’s principal, who should really know where his staff vanish to, and he told me she was in London. Another staff member extended condolences, telling me she’d died, while a third told me she’d divorced and moved to Miami. As far as I know, she was single when I knew her. Maybe she was CIA, or part of an underground movement for the liberation of chipmunks. At least I seem to have my next inspiration for a novel.

My time as a Brave Writer student

by Finlay Worrallo

I feel like Brave Writer has permeated my very existence. It gave my mum endless ideas about home education, which influenced the way she brought my siblings and me up. She jokes that without Brave Writer she would probably have gone insane long ago. It’s offered no end of help and has guided us through home education since we began. It can sometimes feel scary, educating your children yourself, making your own way though the childhood years without the safety net of school, worrying that your way of life is wrong and your children aren’t learning enough. Brave Writer has showed us that we’re not alone; that there are many home educating families in the world; and that it’s a way of life that works.

It was Brave Writer that got us into Poetry Teatime, a beloved tradition we’ve stuck to for over six years and enjoy every Thursday these days. We eat cake, drink tea and read poems to each other. Now, I don’t see poems as intimidating things in books to be studied, but rather as old friends to sit down and have a cup of tea with. We’ve also had countless friends and neighbors round for Poetry Teatime, strengthening those friendships and passing the tradition on.

Another Brave Writer-guided activity we did was film studies. I think that’s a classic image of home education: a mother and children together on a sofa, eating popcorn, watching a Disney movie and calling it learning. And we learned about plot, character, development and satisfying endings – so it jolly well was learning!

Doing The Arrow and The Boomerang taught me a lot about understanding and appreciating literature. By having my reading directed, I was introduced to many great writers, from Charles Dickens to P.G. Wodehouse; and by copying out chosen passages in my best handwriting, I learned about fine language and great writing.

With the Groovy Grammar Workshop, I made long lists of words I liked the sound of and eventually wrote a poem based on Jabberwocky called Snacajoby, filled with nonsense words like “amoj” and “amossa” (they mean “warm” and “famished” respectively). The Writer’s Jungle Online taught me a lot about the process of creating a piece of writing. Guided by my mum, I wrote down elements I wanted to use, did a series of freewrites, then directed all my thoughts together to produce a finished piece: a piece of fiction describing the house I’d like to live in as an adult, with two libraries and a laboratory full of explosions.

Freewriting — scribbling your thoughts onto the paper freely without worrying about what they look or sound like — is one of the most valuable techniques I’ve learned from Brave Writer. It’s the simplest way of getting the bare ingredients of your story down onto the paper, and is far quicker and more productive than painstakingly writing carefully considered words and trying to make each one perfect first try.

Overall, I think Brave Writer has encouraged my development as a writer, a student and a person; and I think it’s been one of the defining factors of my childhood.

Image by Finlay Worrallo

by Brave Writer student, Hannah Hayes

Growing up, I learned early on that it is possible to have a lovely and enjoyable teatime without the tea. To me, tea was bitter but glamorous; something that I wanted to enjoy but just could not. This is why I found the perfect solution: sipping lemonade from delicate, antique teacups instead of tea!

Tuesday Teatimes at my house were soon a big deal. I remember sitting around the kitchen table in the late afternoon light bathed in warmth and the flickering glow of candles. Often Bach or Beethoven played in the background to the babble of words flowing from our mouths as we read poetry aloud between sips of hot chocolate and nibbles of scones.

When we first started the teatime tradition, I rolled my eyes and said, “What a waste of time—I don’t even like poetry.” But my mom was right in persevering, for the love of poetry in my own heart sparked into flame. Soon, not only did I enjoy picking a poem to share, but I was picking multiples, and often the longest ones I could find. There was something about the way the words skipped and soared that became melodious and wonderful to me.

Images by Hannah Hayes

I discovered that the important part of teatime is being surrounded by love and joy. Finding people, words, and ideas that make you soar is a marvel all its own. Teatime is not something that has to be proper, prim, or old fashioned! The essence of teatime is resting and reveling in the simple joys of life—mending the frayed ends of body, mind, and soul by relaxation and reflection in something you treasure. Teatime is not a seasonal thing. It is evolving and living, and it moves with you and your needs.

Often we find our greatest creative geniuses in the moments where we marvel at the minute miracles of life. So, this summer, take time to find what is truly important, whether you find that in jars of icy lemonade or in cups of iced tea.

Want to start your own Poetry Teatime? Here’s how.