Aidan Curtis
A SOUTH East student is happy with his efforts after being named a finalist in a state-wide writing competition.
Mount Gambier High School Year 12 student Cooper Sneddon made it to the finals of the South Australian English Teachers Association (SAETA) 2023 Young Writers Award.
Mr Sneddon had not heard of the Young Writers Award before, but decided to enter after having a conversation with one of his English teachers.
“[My teacher] asked if I would like to enter it because I’ve previously won awards for writing and expressed my interest in eventually becoming an author,” he said.
“I entered three entries – one was a short poem, one was a sample of one of my longer stories.
“And then I did some research on the guest judge, who is a sci-fi author, so I wrote a mini sci-fi story for him.”
Despite not coming out on top in the end, Mr Sneddon said it was still great to receive some recognition as a finalist.
“It was good being recognised for my creative writing because my analytical writing is not very good,” Mr Sneddon said.
“I’ve been recognised in the past for my procedures writing, other forms of writing like persuasive texts, being a public speaker as well, so finally being recognised for the thing I enjoy the most is definitely pretty cool.
“I was a little bit disappointed they didn’t give me the option to ask for feedback, because I would have loved to have known what differentiated my entry from the others.”
Mr Sneddon said the experience was really encouraging for him as a writer, and he hoped to one day have a novel published.
“The book that I’m trying to research at the moment, I want to start writing a book about a serial killer where you’re reading from the perspective of the killer,” he said.
“I know it’s been done before, but there’s unique things I want to do to make it my own story.”
But before all that, Mr Sneddon was focused on finishing off his Year 12 studies and getting into university.
“I would like to be an author as a hobby, but primarily I want to be a clinical psychologist, so a lot of uni coming up,” he said.
“I want to get a fairly decent ATAR as I’m planning to do it online.”
