Throughout my writing career, I’ve been privileged to meet many home school families. Home schoolers and home schooling families are some of my favorite people! I’ve taught at workshops for home school students interested in fiction and I’ve had book tables at curriculum fairs and book fairs.
Talking and interacting with home schooling parents through the years I sensed a level of frustration in this area of teaching fiction. (I sensed the same level of frustration in many language arts instructors in the public schools, but this series is especially for you home schoolers.)
Strong Penchant for Story Writing
In every home schooling family, there seems to be at least one student who has a strong penchant for story writing. That student just seems to soar whenever there’s an assignment that has anything to do with creating works of fiction. (Does this ring true at your house?)
So what’s a home schooling parent to do in this case? It’s not like there’s a standard textbook that teaches the basic foundation concepts of fiction writing. And many language arts books that talk about fiction writing (or simply writing stories), fail to address the issues that your student is hungering to learn. Add to that the fact that published authors in your community are scarcer than hen’s teeth. (The truth is, even authors don’t get to hang around other published authors that much. There just aren’t that many of them!) So it’s not like you can simply invite one to drop in to you next home school co-op meeting.
Moving Forward Cautiously
But you have this budding writer, and you are moving forward carefully and cautiously wondering exactly what to do and how to do it. Well, having been a young author myself (after all, I am an author and I was young once – many years ago), I’d like to share a few thoughts and pointers for you in this article series.
If you’ve read any of my bios, you know that I often say “I can’t remember a time when I didn’t want to write.” And that is the gospel truth. It’s been my inward life-long passion. That why I now step into the role of being bold enough to say I think I can offer a few words of sage advice.
So if you are the home school parent of a student who shows strong tendencies in the area of writing fiction, please follow along through this article series and hopefully there will be at least one or two pointers that will help you.
