Hello, Young Writers!

S.E. Hinton

In 1965, S.E. Hinton was a sixteen year old living in Tulsa, Oklahoma.  She had been writing since grade school and decided to try her hand at a novel.  The book she started, and published two years later when she was a freshman at Oklahoma State University, was The Outsiders.  Today there are 14 million copies in print and it still sells more than 500,000 a year.

When I heard about this, I was fourteen and sitting in my freshman English class in Edmond, Oklahoma.  The Outsiders movie had just come out (and been a huge hit) and here we were about to study it like Shakespeare.  When the teacher told us S.E. Hinton wasn't even an adult when she wrote this book, I thought, "Hey, there might actually be a reason to pay attention in school!"  And the fact the she lived just an hour and a half down the road was almost too exciting to be true.

Well, I have followed that excitement about writing ever since, and have made a career writing all kinds of stuff, including novels, screenplays for movies and television, a couple of plays, blogs, and even a magazine article or two.

It's never too early to start taking your writing seriously, and I want to help you improve.  In this blog I'll offer advice on getting started, refining your work, and finding the central themes of your stories.  It's easier than you think.  And the great thing is, it's basically the same process whether you're writing a book, a screenplay, a college essay, an assignment for class, or just telling a story to a friend.

Writing is fun, and not terribly difficult to learn to do well.  Check in here a couple times a week for new posts, and if you need some tutoring help, I'm available for that as well (You can get my contact information on the sidebar.).

That's all for now.  Happy writing!