The Usborne Creative Writing Book

   Just by paging through, this book offered me the nostalgia to reformulate the dreams of my tween-self back into present day reality. I've been writing since I was twelve, and my style, skill, and genre choice have all changed and developed so dramatically that the wonder of writing feels a little different every time I pull out a pen or sit down at a keyboard. The Usborne Creative Writing Book is everything I would have loved as a young author, and everything I could still use to recreate that magic a decade later. The last line on the back of the book is the writer's pride and joy: "There's lots of space for you to write in, but no scary blank pages".


   One of the most interesting things I have learned about writing is that a blank page is sometimes such a daunting task that the only way to get anything started is to write something - anything, regardless of the state of its gibberishness or uselessness - just to make the page less empty, which gets the thoughts and ideas freer to flow and grow.

   This book is so exciting to me - I sat down with it for an hour at a table and just flipped through, reading and looking over each colour-laden page and exciting scribble notes. It's the young writer's dream, for everything from stories to poems, comics, reviews, blogs, scripts, and other forms of writing. The illustrations assure that no page is boring, inviting the reader - actually, the writer - in to learn and immediately create. There is extensive space to trying out new writing tips and tricks for all the different kinds of platforms. Some of the most fascinating are the article and journalism portions, and character creation/building sections, not often included in the idea of writing.

   If your child, or you yourself, at any age, is/are a poet, a novelist, a journalist, a blogger, a columnist, a critic, a fanfiction addict, and/or a short story fanatic; if they or you are in search of inspiration to feed their/your desire for creation, The Usborne Creative Writing Book is an exciting, extensive, uncomplicated way to explore the incredible creative experience of writing, in any form.

-- Elise T --

For more information on The Usborne Creative Writing Book visit our website here.