A Writing Parent's Perspective

For flit's Tuesday's Writing Essential, she requested articles on our best writing advice...received or given. The following is a piece I wrote years ago, when trying to convince a writer friend that he did in fact have the upper hand when it came to becoming a writer. I hope it might inspire someone else today! 

It's all about how you see things. I've often believed it's about how people choose to see things. As a writer and a mother of five, I have learned to view the cup as half-full, the sky as partly sunny, and the grass as pretty darn green! Parents are surrounded by a wealth of writing opportunities not necessarily afforded to those childless souls. A writing parent knows how to take advantage of these opportunities all the way to a publication!

Starting right in our very own homes, writing parents are privy to an endless source of trial and error methods of child-rearing, housekeeping, cooking, entertaining, and in the midst of all of this-writing! From "How to Squelch Sibling Rivalry'' to "Ten Things to Try to Tame Temper Tantrums'', the list of possibilities in endless.

Leaving the house, and heading off to the local elementary, middle, or high school, the areas of intrigue broaden and take on more of a community-minded aspect. School Board decisions, the presence of police officers in school, an innovative program designed by a physical education teacher to motivate kids who hate sports-all these ideas and more are available to writing parents for the taking.

I have a portfolio full of clips that originated from the hallways, classrooms, or offices inside a school building. They are joined by several more stemming from the volunteer efforts of students and teachers, the introduction of a new city sports league, and the merits in this day and age of becoming a Girl Scout. Would I have generated these article ideas without my reigning title of "Mom"? Yes, of course. Any good writer can smell a story a mile away. However I wasn't a mile away, and I smelled it first!

Fiction fares well, too, in the creative mind of a writing parent. Teenagers are probably the best source of fiction a parent could ever find. Just ask them where they're going and with whom, and you're guaranteed to get the first lines of fiction for that next chapter you're writing. Children's vivid imaginations lend a natural flair to fiction. Even adult fiction can become more captivating when peppered with a sense of enchantment and mystery.

To a writing parent the mundane is non-existent. There is magic hiding in each and every facet of our day. And certainly other parents sense this magic, too. After all, we're not that exclusive a bunch! However we do have an uncanny knack of illuminating that magic, and with the touch of our wands and a little fairy dust-poof! Our magic becomes words.

The rest, as they say, is history. (And I'll bet a writing parent wrote that book, too!)

Kimberly Ripley is a freelance writer and published author from New Hampshire. Her writing column "Freelancing for Pleasure and Profit" appears twice monthly here at Gather. Visit Kim at writerip.gather.com.