You Are a Story

This entertaining and instructive book is a combination of personal history and helpful activities, where the author uses her experiences and even her struggles to reinforce the advice she is giving young people who might like to write, without ever seeming too heavy handed or prescriptive. The descriptions of her own issues with mental health and confidence are peppered with humour and methods for turning these problems into creative and interesting writing, in effect giving teenage potential writers a way to deal with their own experiences while finding their voice. 

Chapters such as ‘Warming Up to Writing’ and ‘Gathering Ideas’ will get teens writing in the first place, while other chapters like ‘You Are Enough’ and ‘How do Deal with your Inner Critic’ will keep them going when they might want to stop. Any adult who works with teenagers will also be able to use the tips and exercises for their own writers’ groups or as fun and creative classroom activities. 

Dockrill encourages children to look for inspiration in everything around them, from the smells, sounds, objects and architecture of their environment to their memories and the people they see. More importantly, she wants them to feel like they did when they were small children and would write without inhibitions, just for the joy of it. In her own words, ‘If you write something and you like it, that’s all that matters.’