Why Writing Novels Matters by Grant Faulkner

When I was a teenager, growing up in a small Iowa town, I was a reader, and I was a writer, but it never once occurred to me to write a novel. Novels were big things that other people wrote. Adults. People who lived in New York City. People who had gone to war or lived exotic lives. I wrote in my journal, and I wrote the occasional poem or short story, but writing something as big and ambitious as a novel just wasn’t something teens did.

So, it’s interesting to me now when I talk to kids and teens who have participated in National Novel Writing Month’s Young Writers Program. I hear how they have written five, six, or seven novels—and sometimes even published one or two of them. I see a glow of accomplishment in their eyes. I see a zeal to create on the page and…