The Imagination of the Middle-School Girl

I just had the immense privilege of sharing some tips about writing, but mostly gaining wisdom for myself, with a group of ten lively middle-school girls in buffalo, new York.

The event was a writing workshop for prospective and incoming freshmen at the Buffalo Seminary, the high school I graduated from in 1972. I hadn’t been back to visit since then, never even going to reunions, in part because I straddled two classes: I entered in one class and accelerated to graduate a year early. But something made me reach out to my high school Alma mater and see if I could somehow do an event with them.

Aside from the poignant pleasures of revisiting the haunts of childhood and youth, I was eager to make connections with some potential young readers.

One thing led to another, and here I am.

The girls who attended came from a wide variety of schools in the Buffalo area, but they had in common a genuine interest in writing, and a passion for reading. They were all willing to speak up and share their thoughts. They listened to each other with respect and interest. They were attentive to me (although I spent as little time as possible doing the talking), and entered into the discussions and the writing exercise I gave them with true enthusiasm.

It was a heartwarming, encouraging, and enlightening experience. I split them into pairs and gave each pair an envelope with three or four pictures in it of people of different ages and types. They were to work them into a story, then come back together and share their inventions.

Each one was highly imaginative. I could never have predicted what they would come up with. No young person in their fictions had more than one living parent, and in at least one case, it was an evil stepmother. Dead bodies were littered all over the place. There were two cancer sufferers. Romance in most of them. A really inventive tale about an immortal Cleopatra who remained so by living off the life force of successive lovers over the centuries.

It was fabulous. I want to do it again, on a more protracted basis, and have a group write a novel together.

Most of all, everything I’ve done while I’ve been here has reminded me how spirited and imaginative young people are, how giving of themselves, how open and eager. At least these young people, who clearly have families who encourage and support them, and who are motivated and intelligent. Were there hints of darkness and confusion? All those dead bodies and illnesses were a hint. But being able to work through some of those issues with stories over which they had control, and where the outcome could be molded and cathartic, is surely a good thing.

What a responsibility parents, teachers, and mentors have to nurture creativity and self expression, not just because it’s an important intellectual exercise, but because, like creative play, it is part of how teens and preteens learn how to negotiate the world, find their place in it, and leave their indelible, individual stamp on humanity.

Thank you, everyone I met and worked with here in Buffalo.

The New Year

I’m not sure why, but I always feel a little depressed on the first day of a new year. I wish I could say today was an exception, this January 1, 2011. I’m not sure where this comes from: unlike last year, I’m not in a deadening, abusive day job anymore. I’m involved in an exciting new business venture that engages my imagination, my intellect, my problem-solving skills—in short, really challenges me in a positive way. I have a book coming out in April, In the Shadow of the Lamp, to be published—like my other Young Adult Historical Fiction—by Bloomsbury USA Children’s.

My children and grandchildren are doing remarkably well, including the new granddaughter who appeared on August 10, 2010. I’m deeply immersed in another YA historical that’s exciting and stimulating to write, and am awaiting feedback from my editor on the second manuscript in fulfillment of my two-book deal with Bloomsbury.

Not only that, but next week I travel to my hometown of Buffalo, NY, to pay a short visit to the writing club at my old Junior High School, now called Kenmore Middle School, and give a writing workshop for prospective freshmen girls at my old high school, The Buffalo Seminary.

Really, life couldn’t be better in most ways.

So why is it that, no matter my accomplishments, lifestyle, relationships, I see the year yawning ahead of me and a hollow sadness tugs at my middle? Is it the inevitable result of growing older, of being more aware of the precarious nature of life? Is it lingering regrets about paths not followed, and to which I can never now return? Do I think of those who are no longer here to share this moment with, my mother, my older brother? Friends with whom I have lost touch over the years?

Or perhaps it’s because I cannot help feeling that no matter how much I have done, no matter what I have accomplished, it will never be enough. Alongside the finished manuscripts and research undertaken and digested, the degrees earned, the business furthered, there will always be promises half kept, tasks begun with the best of intentions that have somehow fallen to the wayside. A new year makes me look back, not forward. Memory can be a burden.

I’ve never been one to make New Year’s resolutions. When I have, I’ve pretty much forgotten them by the end of January. It seems to me that just getting from one end of a year to another is an achievement that shouldn’t be taken lightly. So many worthy people do not manage that journey.

It would be an honorable thing to get through this next year without hurting people, without compromising my values, without letting anything slip or putting less of myself into something than it deserves.

Perhaps I am hard on myself. But if I’m not, who else will be? No one is standing behind me with a whip urging me on to greater achievements. If I felt entirely complacent, I might not spend the frustrating hours at my computer trying to tell stories that will be meaningful and memorable to my readers, creating characters out of bits hauled from deep inside my own viscera.

New Year’s day is like Sunday at the beginning of a work week, only 52 times more intense. Everything is before me, waiting for me to work at. Once I’m doing it, I feel better.

Perhaps that should be my New Year’s resolution: be kinder to myself.

I’ll let you know how it goes.