The Walk Home From School
And other new parts of my writing process
Sometime this fall, my daughter started asking me what I’m working on. It started as a small question— she wanted to know what I’d done with my day, maybe as a distraction from bigger things, or a way to distract me from my relentless questions about what she’d done in her day. But the question grew, as questions with her so often do, and suddenly I found myself telling her, scene by scene, the story of my next middle-grade novel, the very much unpublished and currently not fully written and extremely not at all revised The Ordinary and Extraordinary Auden Greene.
This was all easy enough at first— I had the basics of the plot down and we had recently gone to see Wicked, so she was understanding of the idea that a story can have a prologue, can start at the end and then back up to the beginning, so she let me talk her through that narrative device the first few times until she, in the grand tradition of readers and writing teachers everywhere, said “Can you just get to the real beginning, and not the ending that’s the beginning? Can you skip this part?”
But still, we were fine, moving along in the telling of the story of Auden, who lives a regular suburban life as an aspiring musical theatre star, and the other Auden, a princess meant to battle dragons. I could tell her the story in a way that was age-appropriate in spite of her being about five years younger than its intended audience, skipping some of the stingier parts of the friendship drama, coasting over the painful family dynamics, focusing my telling on things like descriptions of dragons and jokes about a princess in our world who doesn’t know what Cheerio’s are (“Cheery-whats? Is this some kind of porridge?”). She liked the nervous princess trying to understand school buses and backpacks, and I liked the formerly mundane part of my day— pushing her younger sister in a stroller, fishing for snacks in my purse, begging everyone to lower the volume of their voices at least a little bit— turning intellectually challenging, creatively inspiring.
At one point she posited that maybe a certain character was actually a villain in the story and, mind blown and deeply humbled, I had to stop and make a note so I wouldn’t forget the genius insight later, after chicken nuggets being thrown on the floor and ipad negotiations and a few too many Pinkalicious readalouds.
It was all going well— she was entertained, I was appreciating the unpaid labor of her blooming imagination, and the baby liked to babble along with our chatter with her own, currently not understood by us but clearly also brilliant, insights.
But I am not a straightforward and clean drafter, and I was only writing a first draft here, so very quickly we got to parts of the story where I didn’t know what was going to happen.
It is hard to explain to a five year old that the story that will someday be a book isn’t already written. It’s hard to put words to the idea that yes, the story is yours, you’ve made it up, but actually no you haven’t made it all up yet and it’s still evolving. Stories feel sturdy to her, they feel close to reality, and so she was confused by my lack of certainty.
Plus, there is something disarming (horrifying, if we’re honest, but let’s go with disarming), about being asked, every single day, by your kindergartener “so, what did you write today?” and then being expected to really deliver something coherent in reply. By the time I pick her up from school, my morning writing is so far away it might as well have never happened. I can barely remember the last five minutes, let alone what my brain came up with at 11am on its second cup of coffee. And even when I do remember, it is hard to explain to her how a successful writing day can boil down to I wrote about these two characters having an argument, let alone how that might be the answer for an entire week of interrogation.
“You told me that yesterday,” she’ll say. And I’ll have to try to pin down what was new about today’s writing, what was revealed beyond that plot point, what I learned about the characters and the story and maybe even myself.
Sometimes, the problem is her lack of understanding of the writing process. But let’s be honest. MOST times, the problem is that I have not written enough of a plot and I have more work to do and that girl is calling me out on it without even knowing it.
It is, strangely, beautifully, overwhelmingly become a part of my writing process. My editors— all deeply collaborative, brilliant, heart-forward people— tend to understand my process. They know I don’t have all the answers at first. My five year old— also brilliant and heart-forward, somewhat more demanding and definitely less careful in her delivery of her concerns— wants everything to line up and make sense and satisfy her sense of story. She is a child prone to asking why. And I am a writer for whom why has always been the last question I’ve made myself answer in my world-building and magic systems and plotting.
Soon, I will turn in a draft of this book to my editor and there will be so many moments folded in that came from the incessant answering of why, the digging deeper of my daughter, whose curiosity is purer than mine, deeper and more relentless. I am learning that more profound curiosity from her, as I write this draft in the corner of my bedroom or, on good days, at the local pasta shop-turned breakfast cafe. I write now with her in my head, the way my editors and their particular probings and magical ways of pushing me have always been swimming around in there, making me a better writer even after our work together has ended.
There’s something simple about the act of curiosity without ambition, without destination, that I have maybe always needed.
Two months ago, upon the release of my last middle grade novel, The Widely Unknown Myth of Apple and Dorothy, I attended the Brooklyn Book Festival to talk about mythology and fantastical stories. My daughter came too, and while waiting to “listen” (heavy quotes) to my talk, she found a booth that was playing a game where one step of the game was to answer Who is your favorite literary character? My daughter answered, without blinking, Princess Auden, a character that barely exists outside of my own head, a character in a book she won’t be old enough to read for another few years still, a character I am still getting to know.
In her answering that, there was joy and affection and so much delight for me. But also, it was a challenge. A challenge to write a character worthy of being someone’s favorite.
I hope I’ve done it.
Or, more realistically, I hope in time, after the draft has had the opportunity to be cared for by my editor and I’ve had more time to sit with what it is I want to say, I will eventually get there.
News
I have another book coming out this spring! This one is my very first picture book and I couldn’t be more excited to reach these youngest of readers and to share this bit of my heart with you all. A PLACE FOR FEELINGS (illustrated by the incredible Geeta Ladi) comes out April 23rd, but you can preorder it now! It’s for kids with big feelings, so, um, all kids? It’s about a town where there’s a place for everything, including feelings. Except Mara’s feelings are so big, they don’t fit in any of the usual feelings-hiding spots. To say this book is autobiographical would be the understatement of the century. It is a book for anyone who has ever felt like too much in a tidy, nice, small-feeling-ed world. I hope more than anything is that it helps kids (and parents) embrace the beauty of big feelings.
I’ll have more projects to talk about soon, but the holidays are coming, so a few suggestions of books of mine people in your life might like:
Recommendations
Many people know about the Yoto, but not everyone because my daughter and I get stopped by people OFTEN when they see her with her headphones on, listening to something very intensely. It is an audio player for kids and it is perfection. She is particularly into the science-y Ladybird cards available, as well as Junie B. Jones, Magic Treehouse, Hotel Flamingo, and Alvin Ho. I don’t see any need for the full sized player, we have the mini and bring it everywhere we go.
I needed a new phone case and came across these beauties, which are also environmentally minded. It’s holding up so well so far, and it’s also flowery and gorgeous.
I am constantly on the hunt for food that is delicious, I can make quickly, meets some nutritional metrics, and I can make over and over without getting bored. I make a lot of things from scratch, but two kids has made that a challenge, and this veggie burger is the single best non-from-scratch thing I’ve ever gotten my hands on. I prepare them with some tomatoes cooked in balsamic and a healthy slice of fresh mozzarella cheese.