Sheila McKeown and Mary McKinley describe the progress of their magazine e

Product. Deadline. Copy. Pandemonium. The buzz is electric at St Vincent's Secondary School in Dundalk, and ideas are pouring out as our, er, masterpiece of a magazine begins to take shape.

After the initial weeks spent laying foundations, we began putting the building blocks in place. This was where we ran into difficulties. Putting our ideas into action wasn't the easy task we first imagined. What? Who? When? Where? I thought you were supposed to . . ." "No, I wasn't. You were, you muppet!" This was when we realised the importance of organisation, a skill desired by many but possessed by few.

After one sorrowful-looking group returned from an "interview" with hopelessly indecipherable notes, we consoled ourselves with the thought that the day you don't make a mistake is the day you don't learn anything. Lesson: always bring a tape recorder to an interview.

Meanwhile, our Jane Austen people, chick-lit fans to a woman, wanted to travel back to the roots of the genre to tease out what made its creator say that "a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife". The girls discussed how Austen's female characters were lumbered with the need to find suitable husbands as their only means of economic survival and related this to the acres of coverage given in modern celebrity magazines to the love lives of J.Lo, Nicole Kidman, Angelina Jolie and Jennifer Aniston, and whether these women were less or more newsworthy without their partners.

And then there is the frenzy over the marriage of Prince Charles and Camilla Parker Bowles.

Unable to hold back their passion for fashion, someone suggested a short "best-dressed" feature, comparing the style of Austen's Lady Catherine (corsets and all) with the pouting Queen Victoria of Beckingham Castle. How important is the right dress? Cate Blanchett, the star of the award-winning film The Aviator, said that, while male actors are asked about forthcoming projects when they are interviewed, she is asked what she is going to wear on the red carpet.

Then, in the Patrick Kavanagh group, life mirrored art. "O stony grey soil of Monaghan / The laugh from my love you thieved" took on a new meaning as six stony faces sat in a circle and one member of the group was in Kavanagh's usual position of outsider. "Will you stop messing and do some work?" But the "wink and elbow language of delight" soon returned with the idea for an article entitled "Patrick Kavanagh meets Michael Jackson". This group then made the rest of us envious, as they missed class to go on a day trip to Inniskeen, Kavanagh's birthplace.

Experiencing the environment that shaped and inspired the poet inspired them with ideas for a Kavanagh diary and an article on Kavanagh as a modern role model.

The mysterious creative-writing group seems to be busy mining the school for literary talent by organising competitions to allow budding poets to shine. Apparently, classic fairy tales are being given a fresh spin. Watch this space, as they say.

Finally, an update on our own group, the drama queens. Having realised that interviewing Colin Farrell probably wasn't going to happen, we decided to focus on our home-grown talent. A quick survey came up with a rather surprising finding that, given a choice, most young people would prefer to go to a play rather than to a film.

We interviewed Paul McArdle, a Dundalk playwright, whose latest production, Mata Hari, played to packed houses locally. He advised young people interested in acting to get involved in youth theatre, and he gave us an insight into how his work as a lawyer and part-time playwright and producer are closely linked. Maybe it all does depend on the spin you put on a story.

We also organised a film day with Armed Eye Productions, presented by the charismatic Ger Carey. He encouraged us to use our newly acquired acting techniques to create such Oscar-worthy shorts as The Great Banana Robbery and Super TY Hero. ("And the award goes to . . .") Ger left us with some words of wisdom: "Talent is humiliation. Put yourself out there. Watch out for snaky people. And do it yourself: no one else is going to do it for you."

So at the end of this second diary report, our advice is to plan. Plan what you are going to do, when you are going to do it and who is going to do it. Record what has been done. Write it down. It can always be changed and shaped, but it must exist first. Frank Zappa defined rock journalism as "people who can't write interviewing people who can't talk for people who can't read." We hope to rise above that.