Whiz Kid of the Week: Sage Musk

Patch Whiz Kid of the Week:

○      Sage Musk, 17

○      Newtown High School

○      Won national writing honors from the Alliance for Young Artists & Writers

Sage Musk, an aspiring writer, began work on a short story titled, Dr. Mentros, about a summer ago but then he hit a mental road block and decided to put it aside to finish later.

This past school year, in a rush to submit a piece for the 2011 Scholastic Art & Writing Award, sponsored by the New York City-based Alliance for Young Artists & Writers, Sage took up the story again a day before the contest's submission deadline.

He not only finished the story on time, but he earned a national silver medal for humor writing, one of 1,300 students to be recognized nationally for their art or writing. It's an impressive feat considering there were nearly 200,000 submissions.

Sage, who also won when he was 16-years-old, said he additionally earned four regional "Golden Key" awards for the story. Dr. Mentros is a science fiction story that he described to be about a scientist who comes up with a new idea for new technology.

Humor science fiction was not a genre known by many, including Sage, prior to his writing the story.

"I didn't even realize it was a genre until I did it one day," he said.

Among some of the genre's classics were Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five and Douglas Adam's The Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

Sage is working on writing his first book, also in the area of science fiction humor, done in a "satirical Douglas Adams style writing," he said. His dream is to be a published writer.

"I'm looking into a lot of publishing opportunties," he said.