Creative writing fuels this Henry Clay junior
Author: Tammy Lane • First Posted: Wednesday, August 17, 2011
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Sixteen-year-old Lauren Hickey thanks her second-grade teacher on the acknowledgements page of her novel "The Phoenix Key."
Lauren Hickey, who has reveled in reading for as long as she can remember, has found her focus.
“I love stories. I used to come up with stories with my friends and we’d act them out,” the Henry Clay High School junior recalled. “Now I am passionate about creative writing.”
She has already successfully polished a plot and published a novel – “The Phoenix Key.” Through the print-on-demand company AuthorHouse, Lauren discovered an avenue for sharing fantasy fiction.
“You write what you know,” she said in explaining her preferred genre. “Find something that you really like and you really want to write about, and go with it until something clicks. When you have an idea you feel strongly about, you’ll want to write about it.”
The project was not without its hurdles – “I got writer’s block halfway through it” – but she pushed ahead by editing the initial chapters and playing around with ideas. Ultimately, she incorporated a secret room hidden away in the world, which became a crucial element.
“It took me a year to write the whole thing,” Lauren said. “I have four notebooks in my room completely filled with ‘The Phoenix Key’ and rejected ideas for other stories and books.”
And those notebooks hold more than scribbled notes.
“I like to draw out my characters and scenes. It helps me describe them better and gather my thoughts about what the place and person should look like,” she said.
Lauren, who rides horses competitively and takes AP English and AP U.S. History, is accustomed to her hard work paying off. Her story “Wind Dancer” was runner-up for a Young Authors Award in middle school, she received top honors in the PTA’s Reflections contest for her poem about thoroughbred filly Eight Belles, and she earned a creative writing award last year at Henry Clay.
Mary Ellen Hunt, the curriculum coach at Edythe J. Hayes Middle School, remembers Lauren being a mature student who had a lot of patience with the process of developing her manuscript for “The Phoenix Key.”
“She would come in once a week, and we’d bounce ideas off each other. I helped her edit some of it and gave her some advice. Basically, I tried to be encouraging for her to finish it and send it somewhere for publication,” Hunt said.
“Sometimes just sitting down with someone who’s not your teacher can give you an extra push,” she added. “You have to be able to mentor and guide them, but not squelch their creativity.”
Arthur Reynolds, the writing coordinator at Henry Clay, has taught Lauren and worked with her on the school’s literary magazine.
“She is as profoundly committed to creative writing as any student I’ve ever seen. You usually don’t see that kind of opus until students are in college or even grad school,” he said, describing her self-motivation.
That drive will serve her well in the coming months as her family works with a publicist to promote her book.
Hunt praised students like Lauren who aren’t afraid of ambitious targets.
“Anytime you complete a novel is a huge, huge deal,” she said. “Setting a goal and achieving a goal is a very powerful lesson for the rest of your life.”
More about Lauren’s book
A writing sample
After the injured filly Eight Belles was euthanized on the track at Churchill Downs, Lauren wrote this prize-winning poem: