Creative writing club may be an outlet for your school-writing frustrations through its additional extracurricular writing opportunities offered this year. The club wants to expand their outreach and focus to more projects and competitions. The club will now not only be centralized on composition and structured peer-editing but also supplemented with engaging extracurricular events.

Some events and competitions that Creative Writing club members are looking forward to this year include NaNoWriMo and Young Author’s Contest. The Young Author’s contest is a competition that was created by the FUSD to encourage writers of all ages to write stories. On the other hand, National Novel Writing Month, otherwise called NaNoWriMo, is a month-long event event where competitors must write a 50,000 word novel from November 1-30. Club treasurer Pooja Bale said, “Our goal for the Creative Writing Club is to get more students interested in writing because nowadays a lot of students think it’s boring.”

Creative Writing Club gives students’ a direction for their flow of imagination by setting a theme each month for members to expand upon and then write poetry, prose, narratives, scripts, or observations based off of those themes..

The club also has a Literary Magazine called The Penchant that features writings by IHS students. Webmaster Jaime Wang said, “We’re really excited because there is a lot more people this year.”  

Additionally, this club is planning on working with Alameda County Library to organize a Storybook Workshop. This activity involves members providing materials and helping younger students create stories and inspire them to write. “We want to introduce students to creative writing at a younger age, so that they don’t grow up hating it and so that they get to express ideas,” said Bale. “Because a lot of students don’t get that outlet.”

Creative Writing Club’s mission is to help students realize their potential in writing and providing the stepping stones for members’ success through materials, information, and advice. Through these new activities and competitions planned for this year, officer intend to do just that. Wang said, “Having an open writing environment is important. Writing should be fun, and it’s not just about school writing.”