Advice for young writers

• Read! Read widely, read critically. Think about what you read, what works, what doesn’t work. Read novels, short stories, poems, non-fiction. Read television shows. Read computer games. The back of cereal boxes. Advertising. Narratives are everywhere

• Never ever say ‘poetry is too deep for me’ (I have met, and wanted to kick, post-graduate students who say this). Poetry is meant to be deep. But read it anyway, read it aloud, let the words wash over you. It’s not about understanding it the way you need to understand washing machine instructions. It’s about delving into the mysterious and thinking about what you find. Think of it like archaeology – you recognise the words so you have to figure out what they mean in context, from one small splinter you need to build a picture of a whole civilisation. Don’t just read the classics, read poetry written by people living today.

• Go to the theatre, see live music (classical, rock, bluegrass, gyspsy technofunk), visit art galleries with someone you like and talk about what you see. Find a film buddy who will go to the movies or watch dvds with you and talk afterwards about the film.

• Write. Experiment. Rewrite. Put your story in the first person (I went to the zoo), third person (she went to the zoo) or avant-garde second person (you went to the zoo).

• Personally, I don’t keep a journal but you might like to. Or a scrapbook of ideas. Or a visual diary like some artists do with pictures from magazines or photos or snippets of poems or even colour sheets that might inspire you. Or keep a blog like I do (but be aware that a blog has an audience!)

• Write even when you aren’t inspired to write.

• Play sport, ride your bike, dance, do yoga, fly a kite, make a friend, go camping, go to Greece, watch butterflies, go to school, go to the beach…

• Write honestly, write what you know and understand. This doesn’t mean you can’t use fantasy scenarios (like a spy or future world) but your characters’ psychology needs to be in your grasp, the emotions should be real. I bet you know what it’s like to feel like an outsider in a new situation – so when you write about someone travelling into the future, draw on those emotions.