Beyond Harvard and the SATs

Do you have any particular career desires for Jeremy?

They have to come from him. Right now, he would like to be in film, and what he's particularly interested in is sound editing. This summer, when Jeremy is home, Jeremy and I spend a part of every morning reading classic short stories and talking about them. And then Jeremy and Bill spend in the afternoon time looking at all the computer editing software; he's actually building a film trailer right now and just having fun with that. And I think that the exposure to all the stories and to the community that I've built with him has given him some options. He's thinking about sound and story. Fantastic! I wish I had that mind.

Do you think that other parents would be able to do the kinds of things that you're able to do with Jeremy? Would it fit into any family's life?

I've gotten some really nice e-mails, and one of the things the readers are interested in is how you build a neighborhood workshop. Well, these are people who have jobs, and they do things at night and their children have soccer, too, but they are able to find an hour or two during the week, and maybe it's just for six weeks over the summer. Schedules are schedules. Jobs are jobs. I understand that and I thoroughly respect that. It's about what you do in the free time that you have, and if you can find an hour or two a week to encourage the child to read or to look into what the child's writing, if you can find some time to build a workshop for even a month, or four Saturdays in the spring, it is so rewarding!

So you devised a workshop. Tell me how that evolved.

When Jeremy was in fourth grade, I was trained as a discussion leader for Junior Great Books [a nonprofit reading and discussion program offered in schools around the country, often led by parent volunteers]. I got 14 kids in fourth grade, and on Tuesday afternoons I would go over to the school and read the wonderful books the Junior Great Books program put together.

After a year went by I thought, hey, if they'll have me, if their parents would be interested, we're going to do more than just read out loud and discuss. We're going to think about how writers work, we're going to look at, for example, irony and trick endings, we're going to see dialect, the tools of writing. And then let's give the kids some time to write on their own.

What were you doing as a writer during this time? Were you working from home?

Yes, working from home on books, magazine articles, and the business I run with my husband, a marketing communications firm.

How did you come up with the ideas for workshop activities?

I would be lying to you if I said that it was a science. I read endlessly and I'm always thinking about, What part of this book would I like to share with someone else? I happened upon a Norse creation myth about two months ago. It wasn't age appropriate for this particular group of children. But creation myths, absolutely! Let's do that, that's great! So I can't tell you that I sit here and think in some kind of vacuum that I know what to do. I'm just hungry and I'm always looking for something.

Sometimes I'm scared. Late Friday night I'm thinking, "Is it going to work?" I don't pretend that I'm the expert. I'm making it up as I go along, and that is the point. Any parent who loves books and kids could do the same.

All four of your books are about your life. [Her others, "Into the Tangle of Friendship" and "Still Love in Strange Places," are about friendship and marriage, respectively.] But you say you don't like to use the word "memoir" to describe your books. Why not?

Memoir can resemble being cornered in a room with someone at a party and they keep talking and you just say, "Uh-huh, uh-huh." I don't believe in publishing one's personal story just for the sake of telling one's personal story. I am saying to the reader, join me in a search. I'm going to write this in a way that leaves room for you to draw your own conclusion. I hope my work unlocks for the reader their own memories, their own ideas, and their own quest.

Two of your books are about Jeremy. Is there something about motherhood you find particularly inspiring?

Jeremy was a gorgeous baby. We all feel that way -- right? -- about our kids, and I couldn't help putting it down in words. I use words as many people use a camera. I don't believe I really know how special something is until I start to form the words for it. I write to understand.

How does Jeremy feel about having you write about him?

I would never put anything into any of my books -- which have featured my son as well as my husband, friends and some family -- unless I know it's OK with them. Is that cool? Does that make me commercially, you know, sexy? No, it doesn't. But I consider myself to be a person of the world first and a writer way back there, third or fourth. In this case, he was very excited, because he was happy to have the things that are important to him be so important to me that I would write about them.

How did you decide to include, at the end, the kids' work?

Because they were so excited about the possibility of having their work put together in that way, and because I wanted to very honestly show this is what comes from the workshop suggestions. Some of it's unexpected and some of it you're thinking, hmm, I didn't mean to inspire that. But it's what comes, naturally, unedited. These are the voices of children speaking, when unleashed.

• 
• Be the first to post a letter about this story
• View blog reactions