More Writing While Raising Teens

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Mommy Writers possess many tools in their creative arsenal. One piece of equipment, in particular, must be refueled several times per day, must be regularly emptied of waste, and smells much better if it is hosed down on a fairly consistent basis. Also, this tool needs at least seven or more hours of down time to function fully.

Do not for a minute think that I am referring to our children. Rather, I am pointing to our sources of inspiration. That such fonts once grew in our wombs is incidental.

Mommy Writers know that experiential texts, among the weaves of life, are invaluable. Our “pages of events,” especially if they require interpretation, can readily be turned over to our adolescents. Among our human resources, it seems to be our teens who have a knack for asking questions, both painful and insightful, about our texts, both literal and figurative (the latter could be exemplified by “do you really have to wear that lipstick,” or by “you probably didn’t realize it, but you just made a fool of yourself in front of my graphics teacher”).

Teens’ critical discourse, more than all of the feedback of editors, world over, helps mommies shunt passions into all sorts of admirable forms. Whether we are patching together an email to a friend, or finishing the globe’s next best novel, having our youths looking over our shoulders guarantees that our work will be just the right mixture of irreverent, of goofy, and of high brow. When our kids police our efforts, it’s to our advantage.

Consider, as an example, that my children, at every developmental stage, especially puberty, have taught me more than did any of my graduate students, my academic colleagues, or publishers. It is my offspring, not my schooled advisors who find, and successfully activate my emotional button.

No legions of gatekeepers can compete with the contribution my kids make to my work. Only a son or a daughter feels sufficiently comfortable to exclaim, their after school snack dripping from their face onto my keyboard, that the text before them is “stupid,” that a given progression of events smells as bad as the laundry piled up in their room, or that they are more interested in getting their teeth pulled than in reading yet another stanza of a certain poem.

Though their style is sonorous, the result is invaluable. Without the kids’ input, I’d still be thinking about deadlines and pitches, but not about whether a work could benefit from a reordering of its important moments, from contracting its length, or from adding a few spicy words. My output would be tired, cliche, blase.

Without my flesh and blood vanguards, my product would be entirely devoid of absurdity! To please my young adults, I’ve incorporated an entire hibernaculum of imaginary hedgehogs, some serious chimerae, and a few animated plants on wheels, into my writings. I’ve put aside dactylic hexameter and anapestic tetrameter in favor of sometimes hostile free verse. I’ve written about the intricacies of nail polish and of modern stringed instruments instead of droning on about the ancient Sophists or about the “most interesting” points of conflict in interpersonal relationships.

As long as the family teens are young enough to live at home, and as long as I remember to listen carefully to their comments, without lapsing into reminders about chores or homework, I can fashion amazing literature. Sometimes the child/parent relationship just has to wait.

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