for Young Writers

Above: Miranda Guy and Lara Vincent

They say write what you know – and St Mary’s College alumni, Lara Vincent and Miranda Guy both had plenty to draw on for the autobiographical short stories they penned for an English writing class in 2021.

With the encouragement of their Level 3 Writing teacher, Angela Fraser, Lara and Miranda – then in Year 12, submitted their final pieces into the 2021 Hachette Australia Prize for Young Writers, which recognises excellence in creative writing from Australian secondary school-aged students. Both students achieved exceptional results – Lara and Miranda were the only Tasmanian candidates to be named on the 2021 Hachette Prize for Young Writers shortlist, alongside just 13 other students nationwide. They were also two of only five students shortlisted in the creative non-fiction category. Lara was ultimately named the joint winner of the 2021 Hachette Australia Prize for Young Writers in creative non-fiction for her piece, What Home Is – an outstanding achievement considering the 2021 prize attracted more than 550 story submissions Australiawide in fiction, creative non-fiction and poetry. Although they grapple with different subject matter and themes, Lara and Miranda’s stories are both intensely personal autobiographical pieces that touch on their life experiences and memories, some of which are linked to sadness and pain. For Lara, her story was also an exercise in courage in addressing her own childhood and adolescence, a process she found therapeutic. “Everything I wrote about was true and was either something I have experienced or am experiencing,” Lara says. “While I workshopped the story several times, I knew what I wanted to say when I began writing, and although the overall writing process was smooth, the motivation to keep workshopping and editing came less easily!” Lara, who aspires to a career as a creative author or an art conservator, says she enjoys the freedom that creative writing allows. “For me, it isn’t difficult to remain factual while being creative because that is how my brain processes everything,” she says. Miranda too admits that her story-writing process wasn’t linear but rather developed organically and included several drafts.

In her story, titled Nanna, Miranda reminisces about her relationship with her late grandmother. “My Nanna had passed away only a few weeks before our English Writing class began our unit on autobiographical writing, and I thought that the stories she had told me were the ones she would want me to continue to share,” Miranda says. “At the beginning, I found it difficult to sit down and draft my story, because it wasn’t really a subject I wanted to dwell on, but once I reached about halfway, the process became a lot easier. The more I wrote, the more I remembered. “I love the idea of painting with words. The fact that a single word or phrase can change the entire atmosphere of a piece of writing is fascinating to me, and this compels me to keep writing.” When asked about what advice she would give to other aspiring young writers, or students interested in pursuing creative writing as a subject, Miranda’s answer is simple: “start by starting!” “I think the biggest setback when it comes to writing is self-doubt. At a Q&A that Lara and I attended, one of the agents at Hachette told us not to write what we know, but what we want to know, and I think that’s an excellent piece of advice,” she shared. “If you’re unsure of what you’re writing at the beginning – or how to write it – trust that you will know by the end. The more you write, the more you understand.” Lara accepts that giving advice is “tricky when I’m still figuring things out myself,” but she says she would encourage aspiring writers to simply “stick with it.” “It can be difficult to keep your motivation with creative writing when all you’re doing is writing in an analytical style for school, so take some time to write what you want to,” she says. As part of her prize, Lara’s story was published on the Express Media website. Read it online at https://expressmedia.org.au/news/ the-2021-hachette-australia-prize-nonfiction-2-2/.