Secrets To Raising A Writer
Prose-Poetry/Creative Nonfiction
Welcome to a bonus piece of content!
In an ongoing effort to make Talebones a place where the width and depth of my creative work can live, I was recently given permission by Being Human Magazine to republish this piece of prose-poetry (slightly reformatted) that I wrote for their fourth issue a few years ago.
The theme for the issue was “secret”, and so I found myself thinking back to my own childhood as a young writer, as well as all the budding writers I’ve known and taught over the years. I was raised by incredibly supportive parents as well as a network of family, friends, teachers, and mentors on my writing journey. Without them, I don’t know where I would be.
I wrote this piece as an ode to all young creatives and the people who love them and cultivate their passions.
Whether you’re a writer yourself or you’re raising one, I hope you enjoy this little piece of creative nonfiction and let me know with a like, comment, share, or restack!
This piece was originally published in Being Human Magazine Issue 4.
It is used here with permission.
From the moment your gazes meet, you will see something strange behind her eyes. This is because writers are born with a head full of ghosts.
But if the ghosts don’t frighten her— and they won’t— then they shouldn’t frighten you, either.
Her appetite will be voracious. She will gather stories to herself, tasting each one to find her favorite flavors. Some she will consume over and over again, as if they contain secrets that only she can know. Some she will taste once, and then discard.
Her bedroom will be littered with the bones and scraps.
When she is small, she will steal. Shamelessly. She will tell you stories you’ve already heard, written in crayon as though they were hers. The one about the lion who grows up to be king. The one about the cursed princess awakened by the prince’s kiss. The one about the young boy with a pocket full of monsters. She will swallow stories whole and feed them back to you, as if you’re the baby bird. As if you’re the one growing.
But every time she feeds you, she will grow taller, somehow.
She will play with things that scare you. Death. Destruction. Disease.
Little heresies, and heavy blasphemies. She will hold them with child’s hands, ungraceful. She will wield them without any idea what they mean. God is just a story, for her, for now. Death is just a plot device for her, for now. She won’t know yet, how to pray, how to grieve. Not yet.
If you’re smart, you’ll let her play, knowing that life will teach her better than you can. Knowing that God is reaching up for her through the words trapped in her pencil, in her childlike scrawl. He is whispering to her.
There are ghosts behind her eyes. There are spirits in her steps.
Besides: if you ask her not to tell stories about death, about disease, about God, she won’t hear you. Growing writers do not heed advice, unless it arrives in the form of a story.
There is one story she won’t tell you: the story of herself. Because it’s the one story she doesn’t know. She will try on masks upon masks, change her styles often, because she’s always looking for something unique, something new.
What she is looking for is Her Voice.
When she is older, she will read books that change her life. She will read L’Engle, and Tolkien, and Alcott, and Carroll. She will read them as though they were speaking directly to her, and only her. Now that she is older, when she swallows their words, their voices will emerge in her writing. That summer she obsessed over James Joyce will manifest in stories disjointed and strange and mysteriously autobiographical. Her winter venture into George Orwell will turn everything to searing allegory, even if she herself doesn’t understand it. Flannery O’Connor will curse her with second-sight. Toni Morrison will split her in half.
But all the while, she’s searching. Let her search.
Her Voice is not something you can give her.
She may try to send her words away, to the critical eyes of strangers who have never hosted ghosts. There will be contests, scholarships, awards, publications. She will learn a new word: submissions. She will try. She will learn a new word: editors. She may fail. She will learn another new word: rejection.
Hold her. Let her weep, if the tears come. Feel her spine turn to iron as she resolves to try again. Because if she feels compelled to try once, she won’t be able to help trying again. Nothing you do can soften the sting of rejection. But you can hold her, stand her upright, remind her of the stories she fed you when she was small, the ones that made her grow.
Remind her that you raised her body, but God raised her soul.
The secret to raising a writer is to listen without fear. No matter what she tells you, no matter what she plays with, no matter whose voice is speaking through her. There are times you will not recognize her. There are times you will not agree. She may throw ideas like bones across the carpet and come away with a prophecy that you never considered, that you were never given. She will consult oracles on mountaintops you never knew existed. She will sit on the thresholds of temples beyond your boundaries.
All the same: she is yours. And she is hers.
The next time she tells you a story, look close. Closer, into her eyes. See the ghosts dancing there that have been there since her birth.
If they don’t frighten her— and they won’t— they shouldn’t frighten you, either.
"[W]riters are born with a head full of ghosts."
This line is so metal and this article was a welcomed dose of beauty to my day.
"If you’re smart, you’ll let her play, knowing that life will teach her better than you can. Knowing that God is reaching up for her through the words trapped in her pencil, in her childlike scrawl. He is whispering to her."
Sound advice for raising a child in general and for whatever craft or skill they choose to explore. Let it play out.