One of the best compliments that I ever received was from a reader, a parent, who asked if the students’ work in my collaborative journal novels was really the work of students. In other words, she felt as if it sounded so real, I couldn’t have made it up. I loved that compliment. I try to get into character when I write, just the way an actor does, so I spend a lot of time pretending that I am a third grader or a first grader or a fifth grader.
And I can do that because I am able to really imagine things from the inside out. The way that I develop that was by thinking like a writer, so whenever I am in the world, I see someone, and I am trying to imagine myself as that person. It becomes a habit of being to allow yourself to become someone else and to feel the world from that person’s point of view.
Children understand this on Halloween, and they have a fantastic time putting on a costume and putting on a persona and being that other character. We need to give them much, much more time and many more opportunities to have that experience, and writing is a great way to do it.
