HitchcockBlonde

Books were, unsurprisingly, as central to my upbringing as fig rolls and three-hour tantrums. My mum spent hours reading to me both in her womb and out, and ours was a house full of eclectic things to read from AA Milne to Zoé Oldenbourg.

Yes, that is what I’m reading. It’s not as bad as you might think. Ish.

Last week I rediscovered a small cache of some of the endless number of stories I wrote I was young. Most of them involved ponies (you can’t tell me you’re surprised), pirates (bien sûr) and noblewomen disguised as boys (ouch), but all of them are suffused with an unself-conscious pleasure and unbridled energy that reflects how I saw writing: as essential as climbing trees, making paper people or dressing up as boys. From my five-year-old self’s saga of a bear (he escaped, he got lost in a forest, he went back to the zoo; William Kotzwinkle would be proud) to my thirteen-year-old self’s tale of a Roman soldier pursuing vengeance in ancient Bath (still the best thing I’ve written to date. Seriously), my sense of entitlement to be a writer was unquestioned.

Of course, I’m well aware that this was a privileged scenario, and that the majority of kids grow up in a world where books are exotic and excluding beasts, trailing a scent of geekery or irrelevance or imminent boredom, and writing is something you’re forced to do at school. Yes, yes, Rowling and Meyer may have made impressive inroads – mainly amongst 28 year olds, in my experience – but are the teens gobbling these novels writing their own fledgling fantasies, or just hoping that one day they might be cast in the film?

All of which is why I was delighted to be invited to a party held by the charity First Story in Holland Park School last night, where some of the students read their own stories to a public audience. Founded last year by author William Fiennes and teacher Katie Waldegrove, in 2009 First Story has arranged and paid for fourteen writers to work as ‘writers-in-residence’ in fourteen different schools in London and Oxford. Focusing on ‘challenging’ secondary schools – those with at least 30% of students eligible for free school meals, and/or less than 25% getting five A-C grades at GCSE – the writers help students produce their own stories, organise readings of the work, and create proper bound anthologies to sell.

It was bloody brilliant. The precocious poetry and humour of these kids proved what instinctive storytellers we all are – inherent masters of tease, native nailers of soundbites, embryonic imbibers of iambic pentameter. Every school in the country should have a writer-in-residence, no question. Kevin Prunty from Cranford Community College says that through the scheme “I witnessed a real sense of [the students’] inner growth, pride and achievement…the Cranford writers created positive role models and a sense that writing can be safe”. I love his use of the word ‘safe’. That’s exactly how I felt about writing when I was young – that it allowed me to loose myself in delicious and dangerous scenarios without ever having to feel afraid or ashamed. For kids only used to getting that release by diving into those scenarios in real life, writing gives them a very practical alternative; a positive channel for all that youthful energy and frustrated ambition. Anyone who has felt that wonderful, drained post-writing zen will know that it can be as physically cathartic as parkour.

But I also hope that these students’ families find ways to support their efforts at home, and that others will try to instil First Story’s spirit in much younger children. Writing only becomes a real, personal ally when you treat it with the casual, messy, brilliant insouciance that is the default for kids, yet so rarely applied to this ‘academic’ discipline. I want to see the smart notebooks become bits of scrap paper peppered with smeary HB; the beginnings-middles-and-ends become scattergun ideas and unfinished half-tales; and the act itself performed in gardens and bedrooms as much as at desks. Every child deserves the right to feel that words are their safe playground – and their ever-reliable playmate.

Now, off to watch reruns of Masterchef: The Professionals and Merlin until I dissolve into a dribbling stupor. What? Merlin’s based on Le Morte d’Arthur, right?