Walter the Worm

When I was little, I wanted to be many things, but my longest running ambition was to be an author. I used to write little stories in an excercise book and read them to my little sister, who wasn't the slightest bit interested (she was only a baby though).

As time went on I realised that I had neither the ability, talent, application or imagination to pull it off. I'm also not particularly clever at putting my thoughts on to paper, so that was that idea out the window!

I'm currently running a childrens story competition at work, for kids up to the age of 10. The title of the story has to be 'Walter the Worm', but beyond that the kids have to work it out for themselves. And boy have they!

I've been reading some of the entries this morning and the standard ranges from really good to outstanding. These kids have what I wanted all those years ago.

In the stories, Walter has been on holiday, to the job centre, a spy in search of the worlds largest cake, a whole array of different things. Some of the kids have made their stories up into little books, others have done comic strip style stories. Some are handwritten, some are typed.

One thing sticks out more than anything reading these stories. The kids today are so much more aware than we were at the same age. They have so much more than we ever did. My 7 year old son has the world at his fingertips in his bedroom and I often find him searching the internet for various different things, he recently had some homework about inventions, so he Googled the wheel, then did his whole piece on the laptop and even inserted pictures!

In creating Walter the Worm, I have discovered some authors of the future. I'm led to believe that one little girl's ambition is to write for a living, her story made wonderful reading, it made me laugh out loud. I sincerely hope her dream will be recognised and that one day I'll be able to pick up a book she has written or an article with her name on it.