The Aspiring Writer's Journal

Are you an aspiring teen or pre-teen writer? This journal from Susie Morgenstern could help you motivate and inspire yourself. Its basically an entire year of writing prompts, starting with January 1st: Write 10 wishes for the new year to December 31st, when the prompt is to start your own novel.

The prompts range from activity-related writing (like visiting a museum and then writing about it) to writing poems to&well, just about anything. As a writer myself, I can tell you that the most important thing an aspiring writer can do (aside from reading everything they can get their hands on) is to&.you guessed it&write. As many other authors can tell you, it doesnt even necessarily matter what you write, especially in the beginning. The important thing is that you get out there and do it. Write. Then write some more.

Thats where a book like this can come in handy. If you have a hard time motivating yourself or a hard time getting past writers block, these type of writing prompts can really help you out.

That said, I think there are a few things that could have made this book more useful. For one, why tie it to a calendar year? If you picked up the book in March, rather than before January 1st, what are you supposed to do? Skip a couple of months? It seems like it would have been more useful to leave the dates open-ended.

Also, (though I may just be missing this, since I didnt read through every single writing prompt) if the end goal is to get you to start a novel, why not have writing prompts throughout the year that work towards that goal? Like perhaps starting an outline or character brainstorming or&well, you get the idea. The writing prompts are great for getting a person in the habit of writing and expanding your creativity. But, they arent that great for the actual concrete process of building a novel (and, then again, not everyone wants to write a novel&some people are poets. Others want to write short stories. Others would rather write non-fiction articles and essays.).

In a nutshell, if you are a beginning writer or someone who just needs a creative kick to get you going, this journal could really help you out. If you have more a concrete objective, it could be helpful, but it wont lay it all out for you. The goal really seems to be more about getting you in the habit of writing (and theres nothing wrong with that). Appropriate for ages 9 and up.