Part one: Discovering My Muse
The Accidental Author
I found myself writing children's stories somewhat accidentally.
Picture this: I was teaching high school at that time, while juggling life with my own eldest daughter just starting primary school and a toddler just starting early-childhood care. Life felt like standing in the eye of a cyclone, watching everything swirl around me in chaos… while doing my best to look (to stretch the metaphor) like my overall “wind-swept effect’ was a professional and purposeful style choice, rather than the result of being blown almost off my feet by this cyclone daily.
Connecting the Dots
It was thoroughly overwhelming, to be honest. But amongst that virtual cyclone of keeping both my profesional and family life from falling in a chaotic heap, I started to catch a glimpse of the commonalities between what everyone, across all of the different age groups I interacted with, was struggling with.
There were common threads between:
What my high-school students were struggling with in school,
What the graduates were struggling with in transitioning to ‘adult life’
What my husband and I were struggling with as working parents
and
What my eldest was struggling most with as she just started school
What my youngest was struggling with (at home and at daycare).
I’d dabbled in writing fiction in the past, but never published any of it. I was looking for a light to guide me through this storm-season of life though, so I turned back to storytelling. Story structure gave me a tool to help navigate my own way through the whirlpool currents of this life-stage, and I started examining my own life’s challenges through the “lens of story”.
I also found myself spending a lot of time each night sitting ‘sentinel’ outside my daughters’ door while they took their very merry time about going to sleep. This gave me an opportunity, despite how busy life was.
I planted a bean-bag by the cracked-open bedroom door, and with my laptop on my lap, I started exploring “show, don’t tell” as applied to parenting. I started stories that showed my daughters the lessons in life I most wanted them to have.
As it turned out, these were pretty damn similar to the lessons I needed to revisit for myself, too!
I started seeing how we keep coming back to the same lessons again and again through different ages and stages in life.
Mastering these life-lessons is not a ‘one and done’ learning experience ~ and this too is one of those lessons I want to share!
Sometimes this is subtle, but sometimes its a message I really just want to shout from the rooftops. In the epilogue of Alice Green 2, I'm definitely shouting this message, as, as the narrative lens flips from Alice's story, to what's been going on in the background the whole time, invisible to her:
[Link to purchase Alice Green 2: https://mybook.to/ag2ftg]
Alice Green 2: Finding True Grit is a story about learning that natural talent only gets you so far, and that no matter how good you are 'naturally', without learning how to face your fears and get back up again after failure.
The high-school students (more and more of whom were coming through with "a diagnosis of anxiety-disorder" each year) definitely need this story.
My daughters definitely needed this story.
But suprisingly, I think my husband and I needed this story even more!
My motivation for writing this book is pretty clear: While we (my husband and I) strove to teach 'grit and resilience' to our daughters, we were also learning that it is a whole new challenge to level-up from facing fear for yourself, to accepting the need to step back and allowing one's daughters to take the (acceptable, age-appropriate) risks in life that they need to as part of growing up confident and capable!
How much was the constant litany of "be careful, be careful, be careful!" that we caught ourselves telling our daughters every time they climbed a tree affecting their ability to judge risks and face fear with focus? Enough that i knew i needed to write a story about it, thats for sure!
- I know my daughters needed this book, ... maybe yours does too?
Part 2: From Private Stories to Published Works
Despite starting to write again this was just stories for me and my own kids, and another year went by without publishing anything I’d written.
My eldest was gaining skills in independent reading, but she still saw reading as a boring homework chore.
I thought about my own transition from ‘hating reading’ in first grade, to somewhere during second grade getting hold of ‘the right book’. This book hooked me into the story: that first magical transportation into the world of the story, and out of your own experience sitting behind the page, reading it. By the time I finished that book, and the second in the same series, I had become an absolute ‘Book Dragon’; devouring books at a ‘reading under the covers at nighttime and by moonlight’ rate that often kept me up all night (even on school nights – but let’s not dwell on the negatives here!).
I wanted to find a book like that for my daughter, but struggled to find one that fit exactly what she needed: a book that was short enough to avoid intimidating her out of starting it, but long enough to have the story-beats of a ‘proper’ novel. Also – and this was key – one that focused on the character arc and ‘internal journey’ of the protagonist in the way that ONLY BOOKS (with their narrative perspective) – not TV and movies – can!
[Link to purchase Alice Green 1: Nine Year Old Druid: https://mybook.to/q9NI ]
This book needed a concept that intrigued her enough to hook her in, and challenges that were relevant and relatable ‘high stakes’ for her.
On the other hand, it couldn’t rely on just packing in lots of cool adventure, the way many of the books I kept finding for middle-grade readers did.
I knew adventure alone wouldn’t be enough of a reason to read. Netflix and Disney did adventure just fine for her tastes already: there had to be something MORE!
While TV and movies can carry a great adventure plot, only BOOKS can show a kids explicit character development – share the view from inside the a character’s head – in a way other story-telling mediums just can't match.
‘Ah ha!’ I thought. This is the secret key to hooking a kid on books! The story had to show them something they’d never seen anywhere else. Not on TV, Movies, or even story-based video games: The WHY of the adventure. The internal story. This is what good books for adults have, that many of these books I keep searching through for younger readers seem to be skimping on. Books can't compete with TV and IPads for kids who are still just being introduced to reading. They’ve got to play to their own strengths! Do what TV just can’t… and give kids a real reason to read.
Yes, start with an adventure, but focus on what drives it, instead of just what happens. Peel back to what the characters were thinking and feeling as the story happened. Where do the ‘good guy’ and ‘bad guy’ share common ground, but react differently because of their own previous experiences, internal thoughts, and feelings?
Yes, the hero saved the day, but how was she changed in this process? How did she grow as a person because of this experience?
These are questions kids are genuinely looking for answers to (and so are adults in their 40s, to be honest!).
Books can have those answers, and that is why I write!
An Invitation
To all the parents, guardians, and caregivers reading this: Your struggles and your children's struggles are more connected than you might think. Let's explore these connections together through the power of story.
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With love and stories,
Demi Linden
#ChildrensLiterature #WritingLife #ParentingJourney #StorytellingSolutions
This blog article also available as a podcast through Podbean:
https://moontreehousebooks.podbean.com/e/on-why-i-write-demi-linden-author-of-childrens-fiction/