On Writing With Children

I was a writer long before having kids. I’ve been writing nearly my whole life. I attribute my love of writing to many things in general, but to one specific person in earnest. I believe I had her as my teacher first in middle school, but then again in High School. Mrs. Easterly. She was, as I recall, my first true push into good fiction, both for reading and writing. She saw past my dyslexia and encouraged me to write more stories. She seemed to genuinely enjoy them, and constantly told me, “write more. It’s good.” I have ridden the high of that affirmation ever since.

In highschool I kept a consistent journal and tried my best to include a work of fiction into my acedemics regardless of class. Few saw it as good. Mrs. Easterly continued encouraging me.

By college I was steadfast. I enjoyed writing stories, no matter how boring or mundane. But it never occured to me, the son of a doctor, following the shadows of my 3 brothers who seemed to be on their way to becoming (and with the braggert tone of my proud parents) “a doctor, a lawyer, and a professional photographer.” So what were the odds of making writing success, in fact, was that really even a thing people did short of wild blockbuster luck and success? Not in my mind. So I did other things. None of which ever had the potential to carry the proud banner of my parents brag, but by mid-twenties, I genuinely didn’t care. I’d found clarity in psychodelics and cared more about genuine experience and place on earth than desire for a career. And so, I kept writing, no matter what I did.

These were the golden years of my writing. I quickly learned that drugs, while fun for expanding the mind, do not make good work of writing. So it became a categorical thing. I was learning how to put the work in, get the words on the page, and then reward. Hunter S. Thompson — Lite. More of really just a nod really. I would work only seasonally. And I found jobs that allowed for time for mental freedom, one way or another. It was during these years that the Internal Dialogue really began to take over. With low stress jobs, plenty of time to think, I realized I could keep the process of writing going even when doing other tasks. When you are doing things like landscaping, building cabins, clearing trails, planting trees, slicing cheese, and sitting in a fire tower, you have a lot of mental freedom. And, as with most of those tasks, minus slicing cheese, your body is moving which creates a beautiful table for your mind to get going in. I always think my best while in motion. Especially trail running or walking. So the Internal Dialogue could satisify my brain, much in the same way as putting words down on a page. And from my personal philosphy standpoint, was that not the whole point? The process seemed more of importance than anything. Added to it, my Non-Adhd would allow me to then, when the time came to sit with a paper and pen or computer, I would go all in. I could write often what I had been through already, or something all together beyond and more developed because I had already worked out in my brain.

This was a productive era. I wrote several kids stories. Collaborative screenplays with multiple friends. And a terrible novel, but a novel none the less. It was something akin to a weird, long lsd trip. Fun colors. Interesting moments. But then just long, drawn out, tired, and weird. By the time it was over I was ready for it to be over. Probably a few hours before.

Then we had our first daughter.

First off, this changed a lot about how I approached my world, in a few significant ways. I quickly realized, before she was here, that I wanted to be able to offer her opportunities that would be more expensive than what I was currently capable of providing. This motivation to find more reliable, better paying work was clear to me from the moment I met her. She would have happy, loving parents no matter what, but ideally, I wanted to be able to show her the world. And that’s hard on seasonal and entry level work.

So I began working more. Working more with jobs that did not allow mental freedom. And more consistently. Added to it, when I wasn’t working, there was this tiny girl, and I wanted to know her and be in her small world all the time. You could see the growth and change every day. The eyes looking just a little further. The voice figuring out how to work. The response first to sounds, then to letters, then to words, then to sentences… growth of a human is a fascinating and wonderful thing to observe in the moment, over the long haul.

But I still had to write.

And here is the thing about the Internal Dialogue. Well, I say that, then I wonder… This may just be for me… But for me, once I developed this Internal Dialogue, capable of telling a story, conversing between multiple entities (humans, animals, sometimes clouds, and inanimate objects, you name it, it can probably talk in my world), and traveling the world between stories… this thing doesn’t really shut off again. After over a decade, the Internal Dialogue had bore into my bones, become a part of who I am, and how I think. And with or without a baby, it’s still with me.

So while my daughter was little I made a very conscious effort to use the short times, even if they lacked the long time deep dive that I prefered. A twenty minute nap for her was a ten minute writing stash for myself. And instead of having a few casual projects at a time, I had one. One at a time. This was new. And it was good. What I’d done before, having a few open projects at once, had very much worked in my twenties. A very loose schedule and pace of the year allowed it to still produce some final products. But it was never going to work with children.

And another thing happened. I had a really good idea. I have thousands, seriously thousands of different ideas. Some are good. Some are great would be incredibly challenging to attempt, and some are pure shit. Some are interesting, but boring. Some are just dumb. But then, once in a while I happen upon one that I just know is going to be, before I’ve even gotten it off the ground. Hansel and Gretel was this. I’d rewrite. And my daughter, already maned Gretel, would be the herione.

So I wrote it.

First as a screenplay. The first version was a classic telling. The old world. Lumberjack. Breadcrumbs. The evil witch. The fattening up. The oven. And I liked it.

But I had another idea now. While writing this one I had the idea of it being a modern tale. It would take place in Olney, on a very specific piece of property some of my good friends live on. The dad would be a logger. A few other details were beginning to change. Beginning to evolve. There was an evil step mother who had poisoned the kids true mother and killed her. Once done, I liked it. But already I knew what the next step was. A third version. In this one, the fairy tale would come into it’s own. The modern world and the old world would collide in a very deep and dark place in the forest. The young Gretel would be confronted with an old world version of herself. The tale became more cryptic and twisted. Dark and wet like the cedar groves it lived in. But by the time I’d finished this version I saw the final piece. The whole point where this long walk had been taking me…

The Four Cornered Forest, a novel based on a mixture of the tales above. A virus outbreak has closed off the area. People are beginning to starve and freak out. The virus is killing people. But hunger is making other people kill people. The children’s mother is killed by an old flame of their father. Gretel is on to her. Tries to stop it. Darkness ensues. The children are abandoned. Forced to survive on their own in a dangerous winter forest until they decide to save their father. Amid all the pain, there are moments of secret, moments of mysterious forest magic, a world so much more than what others would see from the outside.

Now, to be clear, by the time I’d gotten to this last stage of the story, my kids, two of them now, were both in school. By this time I’d become more stable in my work life. I owned a buisness. And while it was a job every day of the year, I figured out a way to work 1 to 2 hours, 3 to 4 days per week, during the school year, into my work day. I took no time for fucking around except when fully necessary. My goal was words on a page, or a minimum, some form of advancement of the story. Correcting flow, story developement, etc. Some days I would only get 1 sentence down. That would have to do for that day. No reason to cry over spilled milk. Keep moving the next time an hour presented itself. And although in this new world of kids and a business seemed to want to crush my Internal Dialogue, I would no sooner kill it off than I would chop off a finger.

The Internal Dialogue was becoming a problem though. And this, this is something I’m still living with. I would say I am fixing it, if I were, but I am not. You see, it’s like this. When you develope a thing like an Internal Dialogue, and you give it free roam, which I did, it often keeps going whether or not you are talking to other people, or doing other things. It’s easy to deal with your Internal Dialogue when you are planting 400 tree plugs over the course of the day, or are doing abolutely nothing besides watching for wild fires from a tower 70 miles removed from the nearest human. But when you have your daughter’s fifth grade conference and you are supposed to be paying attention, but there is a scene unfolding in which an evil witch is plotting to poison the father with herbs that make him complacent and lazy so that the witch can then suffocate the mother of your children… well that shit is hard to ignore, I can tell you as fact. And to be perfectly honest, I’ve just always figured I can deal with both simultaneously. And some times I can, but, as I’ve continuously found, sometimes I can’t. I can’t keep up. And it is the real life humans that are left staring me in the eyes wondering when I am going to respond and wondering how much of what they said actually went in. Just ask my wife. Or my daughter. Or my son. Or my business partner. Or one of my best friends. All have been subjected to this sort of thing over the years, on no infrequent basis. But if I’m being perfectly honest, I’m not trying to change it. I’m not going to cut my finger off. I’m just not.

Now in this time I’d also completed a few other stories, one of particular importance and quality with a friend. And so a few long breaks were taken during this long lived life of the Four Cornered Forest. And after a year + long break away from it, I am just now on the edge of finishing edit 12? 13? 20? Jesus, I don’t know. But I’m ready to be done. This last edit is on the home stretch and I have a piece of paper on my desk with 6 other stories that I could take off into when this is done. Three have been started but only in the quick, casual, “see if I like the feel of this story” kind of way. (And I do like them.)

So, soon, I will be off on into new worlds. My daughter is now in highschool. She homeschools part of the day, so is home when I write. But unlike when the kids were little and I was lucky to seriously get at most ten minutes before being interrupted, now I welcome the interruption. I see my years in the same house with the kids waning, and I want every moment I can get. Time has returned and with it, focus, good long sections at a time. And I feel like my brain is stronger for the years of challenge. The challenge of finding time, and committing to thinking about a certain thing is one of the hardest parts about writing with kids. There are a million distractions without kids in this new world, then add the children and it can be sole crushing to watch your productivity plummet. But you just keep going. Like walking a long mountain trail. Just keep walking, one step, no matter how small, at a time. And then, one day you look up and you’ve made it somewhere. And it’s an incredible view. And even if like me you are an unpublished writer, you won’t care if you truly love the task… because when you get up further on the mountain, the equivilence of age, you get to look back down into the valley, and you’re shocked at the worlds you’ve created down below. There. I sit down. I open my pack and pull out a snack and a thermos just looking down. My best friend, the Internal Dialogue that has not once let me down or left me in all these years, is sitting there. Sometimes he won’t stop, but I can tune him out for just this moment, the view, the sun setting behind me, the golden light on the rising moon, rising over the towering trees… damn it’s a fun spot. Not many know it. A few. Maybe more later. But it’s here for me.