Easily the most popular of Margaret presentations, You(th) Write is perfect for a 45 minute classroom time frame. Margaret’s main purpose in school presentations is to demystify the process of creative writing and publishing books. Her talks are inspirational, letting students know that they too can become writers if they are willing to work hard towards that dream.
Margaret shares her own journey of becoming a writer and illustrates it with anecdotes from her life. She tells the kids about active, first person narratives, the feeling of “occupying some other person’s skin,” as a basis of good writing. The character trait of empathy is employed and children are given an opportunity to think and feel like a writer. Margaret gives examples from her own work, gives students fun writing exercises and shows the differences between fact-based writing (non-fiction) and imagination-based writing and how the two use the same traits and skill sets.
