The day after John Updike died, Terry Gross played a bunch of old interviews with him on Fresh Air.
They’re pretty charming.
You should give ’em a listen.
In one of them, they were discussing age, and how, each day, we’re older than we’ve ever been before.
And how, as writers, our job is to trailblaze and then report back to those younger than us about we find.
I think he meant: with the insights and wisdom gleaned through age.
But he was too modest to actually say that.
Anyway, I was thinking about how his statement applied — or didn’t — when you’re writing for children, be they 3 or 13.
When I’m feeling philosophical about my work, I say that I’m trying to be present to the perspective of children, and to articulate that perspective, and to, thus, value and validate it.
I think it may be the opposite of trailblazing and reporting back.
I think for me (at the risk of sounding wildly therapeutic), it’s more about trying to access the parts of my heart, mind and memory that are five or nine or so — that see the world the way I did at five or nine or so — and to love those parts up a little bit.
And, in so doing, loving up the hearts and minds of the five- or nine-year-olds who might read my books.
There are a whole heap of problems with this assessment.
For one thing, there is no single "perspective of children".
And for another, only a narcissist would think that any five-year-old today would want or need exactly what I wanted or needed at five.
Still.
I guess what I’m getting at is that sometimes, instead of trying to leverage the insights and wisdom that might be gleaned through age, maybe the best I can do is get out of my own way and fall back, awash, into the thrumming emotions of childhood.
What do you think?
I agree completely about getting out of your own way and tapping into the inner child. That said, I also think that we can’t help but add a little bit of perspective in there, and that is how we hand child readers a map that shows them their way out of town (to paraphrase Richard Peck).
You’re making my brain hurt. 🙂
I don’t know what the answer is except that we don’t really have the answer at any age. I mean, sure, we get somewhat wiser as we get older, but we lose some insight too as we get set in our blindingly narrow ways.
I kind of prefer to eat M&M’s and hope for the best. Oh, wait…is that my nine-year-old self talking?
M&Ms. You’re a girl after my own heart…
I just read Sonya Hartnett’s The Ghost Child, http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2008/jun/28/saturdayreviewsfeatres.guardianreview5 where the main character is an old lady who describes herself as being on the top of a mountain that she spent her life climbing. She can look back at herself and all the different times of her life as she was on the journey climbing the mountain. She is talking to a boy who showed up unexpectedly in her sitting room, and who might be a ghost. She tells him her life stories.
The poem I wrote for Trisha’s challenge this week coincidentally is also about being on top of a mountain looking down at past losses/love. I wrote the first draft before reading the book.
I don’t know about writing as a guide for children but I am struck by the mountaintop experience as an image of perspective. I guess if you can offer it to willing ears it could be somewhat of a guide. Or it could just be instructive for yourself; a comfort or a challenge to move onward.
I want that book!!!