Young Writers need time, support and respect in order to reflect on the stories and ideas that are important them. Your young POPS the Club writers will struggle with what to write, how to write, when to write. They will write and toss away. They will sit and think long and hard. They will need prompting, support, space. The process of personal writing is therapeutic, an opportunity for the writer to struggle with her deepest feelings, to process his important memories, to ponder the meaning of memory. The act of writing alone is as important as the finished product—in fact it’s more important. This writing game is all process for a long, long time. Sometimes forever. This is important: To remember that the idea is not to write something to elicit a reader’s response. Rather, the writer must struggle to discover his or her own truth and voice and story. That is why “fill in the blank” writing never produces anything meaningful. That is why too much structure can stifle and suffocate the mind, heart and soul of a writer, leading to a sea of blank pages. Writing should be an act of self-discovery, and the prompts and exercises we offer here are guides to allow teens to think and write about themselves with no pressure, no audience. They’re about offering opportunities to stumble and sometimes fall, to be confused, lost, stuck, sad and afraid of their own thoughts but to write down those thoughts down despite it all. Every word your students record is a victory and should be regarded as such. Every word they commit to a page is an act of courage, even if no one ever reads those words, even if they instantly destroy the paper on which they have written. Personal writing builds strength and confidence, even when the writer is not aware of it. Do not count on neat, easy-to-digest stories, essays or poems. Do not count on having an opportunity to read anything—for a while. Support without pressuring. Encourage without demanding. Your students’ writing will be uneven, rough, often sad, sometimes almost inarticulate. But they are also likely to be, if you allow them to be, memorable. Encourage your students to read, for inspiration, ideas, guidance. Reading their fellow students’ work will most likely be the place they begin. They will recognize themselves in the POPS Anthology stories and poems. And over time even the shyest, most nervous of your students is likely to find his or her voice if you allow the space for that voice to exist, if you treat the world that is POPS the club as if it is sacred, and most importantly, if you help them to understand it and their stories belong to them. Each club will be provided copies of the POPS the Club anthologies, access to POPS the Club website and to POPS the Club social media. We wish all POPS the Club students to join our circle/family on our website and social media, and the way to do that is through writing—poems, raps, memoirs, scenes, monologues, rants, drawings, paintings, photographs, compositions, a graphic story, a cartoon…students are limited only by their imagination. Please encourage your students to avoid using curse words; if they must, we will edit these before we publish. Everyone’s story is important! Let the students know that younger brothers, sisters, cousins, friends, neighbors, future classmates will be comforted by their words. POPS the Club writers/creators pass along their stories to future generations of POPS the Club kids so they can help others break free of the chains of shame, sadness and even depression that so often accompanies the experience of loving someone who is or has been incarcerated.