"Her mouth fell open at the sight of the empty plate of fish and the bushy tail of our neighbour's cat, dashing out of the kitchen window. My mother stood staring at the bunch of herbs in her hand puzzled what to do with them now that the fish was all gone!"

So wrote 10-year-old Maximillian Cini in an essay during a creative writing course. It may not be enough to win him a writer of the year award, but it's not your run-of-the-mill schoolboy essay either.

Maximillian's short composition contained not just good descriptive passages but a sense of irony too: his mother had popped out to borrow some herbs from her neighbour, for her fish sauce, only to have the neighbour's cat steal the fish in the few moments she was away from her kitchen.

The two-month course is run by the Institute for Child and Parent Learning Support of the government's Foundation for Educational Services and accepts pupils with a flair for writing aged between eight and 13.

The course is intended not just to stimulate but also to channel the children's creative talent. They are encouraged to express themselves to the full through developing their pre-writing, drafting, compositional, editing, publishing and journal writing skills in both Maltese and English.

Fully qualified tutors model the writing process from beginning to end and use activities such as drama to prompt writing.

Klabb Kittieba Zghar (Young Writers' Club), as the programme is called, is the brainchild of Nora Macelli, the foundation's chief executive officer. She was convinced that in Malta too there must be children with a talent for creative writing. So the foundation set out to provide them with help and encouragement.

Recruitment starts by means of a circular sent to all state schools and applicants are assessed on their interest and ability to write.

Successful pupils are put in groups of not more than 10 and each group is assigned a tutor trained in the Writing Workshop methodology.

Sessions are held once a week on Saturday mornings at the National Curriculum Centre located at Maria Assumpta Girls' Secondary School in Hamrun.

Maximillian's course came to an end last Saturday with a half-day workshop for children and their parents, who had been invited to attend a parallel programme in line with the foundation's family education efforts.

In the past year, three programmes for children have been organised, with the participation of more than 100 budding authors, and two for parents, attended by more than 20 in all.

"At first I thought the club would be like private lessons," said another 10-year-old participant.

"However I realised from the start that this was not to be. We could write as much as we wanted about things that we liked. Every day we wrote anything we wanted in our journal.

"We also met Trevor Zahra who took part in one of the sessions with us. He taught us more things, like how a book is created and produced. At the end of the session he made me want to go out and buy more books.

"During the course I learned a lot of things and it also helped me with my schoolwork. I learned how to draft my work, to use the writing triangle and use voice, purpose and audience. I enjoyed peer editing too. I would like to attend another course next year."

During the second programme, which was held between November and February, parents expressed as much curiosity as their children about the creative writing process. This interest inspired the foundation to offer writing sessions to the parents as well.

Josephine Saliba, the coordinating Programme Officer, said this was perhaps the best way to show parents what the club is all about as well as how to encourage children to write successfully and creatively.

The course for parents, Klabb Kittieba Genituri, is run at the same time as that of their children, and the parents are often invited to go and see their children at work. Having gone through the same process themselves, they can easily understand what is going on and the rationale behind each step, said Ms Saliba.

For the last session, parents are invited to a three-hour workshop during which they and their children have the opportunity to write together.

They may be asked, for example, to create stories around a small number of words, which gives them the chance to have a few laughs at their own yarns. Other forms of writing could be about the dreams that they have for their family, or writing poetry.

"What at the start of the sessions looks like an impossible feat turns out to be a most satisfying achievement," said Ms Saliba. "During the workshop it was very encouraging to notice that heads of schools and teachers responded to an invitation from the parents and came to participate to see what Klabb Kittieba Zghar is all about."

One parent remarked: "The course was well planned to the minutest detail. The delivery was easy to follow and the course content of varied interest.

"The course was not only of academic benefit to our children but it also served as an occasion for us parents to discuss issues and share experiences, sometimes laughing and sometimes crying over experiences that bind us together. We became friends."

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