Many years ago I had been a judge on another award for young people’s writing – The WHSmith Award which ran for about 30 years. When this award stopped because of lack of funding and the fact that teachers were so overburdened with the demands of the Curriculum and testing and didn’t have time to encourage this kind of creativity within schools, I always felt that the award had left a big gap. When the organisers of this new award – Wicked Productions – who have created the Wicked Musical, approached me to help spearhead this new award for writing, I was really pleased. What makes this award unique is the breadth of its appeal spanning a wide age-range and allowing children and young people to write on any theme and style.

There were nearly 4,000 entries but I don’t actually get to read them all as I just wouldn’t have time. There is a great team of teacher judges who do the initial sifting and then myself and William Fiennes from First Story judged the shortlist. I didn’t find it hard-going. There were some that were much better written but generally the standard was very high. We were looking for stories and poems that are written from the heart and passionately felt, where young people have written for themselves to develop their own style and voice. 

Some of the runners-up stories were excellent. In fact, in each category there were often two that we really couldn’t decide on. I really enjoyed reading some of the stories in the 11-13 and 14-16 categories in which the quality was much higher than the previous year. There were two that stood out apart from the winners – a story by Samantha Nead from Cheshunt called Baby Boy and I Spy by Georgina Lithgow from Herts. 

I never really did enter any writing competitions when I was young though I did have the odd poem published in the school magazine. I wasn’t particularly gifted with writing at school and wasn’t much good at reading either as a young boy but I loved stories. My mother would read to me all kinds of things – the Just So stories, the Jungle Book and then later Beowulf and Treasure Island. She was an actress and really brought these adventures to life. I was completely hooked. I suppose it was partly drinking in all these stories that stayed with me all my life. When I became a young teacher, there was a moment one afternoon in class at the end of the day that I was reading a story to my Year 5 class. They were tired and not interested, and I realised that what I was reading to them just wasn’t any good. So I went home that night and wrote up something of my own and then told it in extracts over the week. The children seemed to like it and when the bell went at the end of the day, they didn’t want to leave. That gave me such a sense of excitement and I realised for the first time that perhaps I could do this.

I do think it is important to have lived an interesting life as a writer. I try to keep my eyes, ears and heart open. Once I’ve got an idea that I am really passionately about, then I research around it and dream it out in my mind, weaving it around in my head until I am familiar with the characters and their back stories and the back ground.. I don’t plan out the plot, rather let it emerge as I write. When I write I write by hand and try as far as possible to forget I’m writing it all. In other words I tell it down, through my fingers, speaking it onto the page, as if I’m telling it to one person only, my best friend. This is my way of writing but it’s by no means the only way. For many writers imagination is enough.